THREE  SONS  | 

1  AND  A  MOTHER  ft 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 


WILLIfl!  P.  TOEDEN 


Z 


/QQ 


THREE  SONS 

AND  A   MOTHER 


BY 

GILBERT  CANNAN 

AUTHOR  oj  "OLD  MOLE,"  "BOUND  THE  CORNER," 

ETC.,  ETC. 


I  saw  a  dead  man  in  a  fight 
and  I  think  that  man  was  I 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1916, 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF   AMERICA 


TR 

Loos 


TO  MY  BROTHER 
J.  F.  C. 

The  shadow-play  of  which  this  tale  is  made 

Is  also  yours.    It  moved  before  your  mind 
And  mingled  with  the  visible  and  stayed 

Explanatory,  mystic,  there  behind 
All  knowledge,  always,  powerful,  a  pit 

Of  ghosts  from  whom  our  being  springs.    They  dwelt 
Where  you  and  I  were  born.    Their  lives  are  knit 

With  yours  and  mine,  and  what  they  did  and  felt 
Dictates  what  you  and  I  must  feel  and  do 

In  our  own  shadow-play  through  which  we  move, 
Hardly  less  ghosts  than  they.    If  they  were  true 

We  have  our  life  and  love  that  truth  to  prove. 


634705 


CONTENTS 


I.  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  A  FAMILY 

II.  CHILDHOOD  DAYS  . 

III.  THE  WIDE,  WIDE  WORLD     . 

IV.  THE  PETER  LESLIES 

V.  SUFFERING      .... 

VI.  WORDS 

VII.  AFFAIRS 

VIII.  TIBBY  M'PHAIL     . 

IX.  THE  DESCENT  UPON  THRIGSBY 

X.  MAKING  PLANS 

XI.  A  LETTER  FROM  EDINBURGH 

XII.  JOHN  ASTONISHES  THE  FAMILY  , 

XIII.  CLIBRAN  HALL       . 

XIV.  GREIG  AND  ALLISON-GREIG    . 
XV.  MARGARET  DISSATISFIED 

XVI.  CATEATON'S  BANK 

XVII.  SELINA  LESLIE       . 

XVIII.  JOHN'S  WEDDING  . 

XIX.  AGNES  OF  THE  LAKE 

XX.  HUBERT  AS  DEVIL'S  ADVOCATE     . 

XXI.  ANDREW'S  WILL     . 

XXII.  A  LETTER  FROM  BERLIN 

7 


PAGE 
II 

15 
25 
33 
46 

57 
65 
76 

87 
96 

105 
no 
123 
132 
144 

155 
170 

i85 
196 

210 
224 
249 


8  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXIII.  THE  EMPTY  HOUSE 255 

XXIV.  FANNY  SHAW  .        .        .        .        .        .        .  271 

XXV.    TOM  AND  AGNES 279 

XXVI.  THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  VANITY  ....  289 

XXVII.    AMBITION 299 

XXVIII.    TOM'S  MARRIAGE 308 

XXIX.     NEWS  FROM  JOHN 326 

XXX.  MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED       .        .        .  341 

XXXI.    SANCHO  WILCOX 358 

XXXII.  MRS.  LESLIE  IN  DISTRESS       ....  372 

XXXIII.  ACOMB    TO    THE    RESCUE 385 

XXXIV.  JOHN'S   RETURN 414 

XXXV.    A  LETTER  FROM  ROME 431 

XXXVL    MRS.  ELIAS  BROADBENT 436 

XXXVII.    CATHERINE 451 

XXXVIII.  MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      .  470 

XXXIX.    BELL,  LAWRIE  &  Co 488 

XL.     DISASTER 503 

XLI.  A  LETTER  FROM  LONDON        ....  524 

XLII.  MARGARET    GATHERS    HER    FAMILY    ROUND 

HER 532 


THREE  SONS  AND  A 
MOTHER 

CHAPTER   I 

THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  A  FAMILY 


THE  history  of  a  family  commences  at  the  point 
where  it  begins  to  be  ashamed  of  its  origin.  The 
Lawries  therefore  look  no  farther  back  than  Margaret 
Keith,  the  laird's  daughter  who  married  the  pale,  large- 
eyed  minister,  Thomas  Nicol  Lawrie,  son  of  a  butcher, 
but  A.M.  of  Edinburgh.  When  he  died  she  brought  up 
his  five  children  on  ninety  pounds  a  year.  She  need  not 
have  done  this,  for  her  brothers  were  thriving  men,  but 
as  they  had  never  forgotten  the  butcher  behind  Thomas' 
degree  they  were  unable  to  offer  help  without  condescen- 
sion. Neither  without  condescension  could  Margaret  ac- 
cept so  much  as  good-day  from  man,  woman  or  child. 
As  minister's  wife  she  had  ruled  firmly  in  the  wide  parish 
and  had  clothed  herself  in  a  dignity  of  which  she  was  not 
going  to  allow  the  death  of  her  husband  to  strip  her. 

She  had  a  grim  struggle  with  Death,  fought  so  stren- 
uously and  with  so  fierce  a  spirit  that  the  gentle  Thomas, 
who  had  no  intention  of  dying,  could  not  bear  up  against 
it,  saw  his  condition  as  he  had  seen  so  much  else,  through 

n 


12  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

her  eyes,  and  gave  up  his  soul  with  the  sweet  smile  which 
had  been  almost  his  only  gift  and  more  than  any  other 
quality  had  brought  him  out  of  the  slaying  of  animals 
into  the  cure  of  souls.  At  first  Margaret  took  his  smile 
for  a  sign  that  she  was  winning,  but  almost  at  once  she 
knew  that,  as  always  at  crucial  moments,  he  was  evading! 
her,  going  over  in  his  heart  to  the  side  of  her  adversary, 
going,  moreover,  maddeningly,  out  of  amiability  and  what 
she  called  "that  foolish  weakness  of  yours,  Tom."  Also, 
when  he  smiled  like  that,  she  never  could  resist  giving  him 
what  he  wanted,  and  now  as  he  smiled  she  could  not  re- 
sist, and,  desiring  death,  he  was  taken.  She  watched  the 
smile  die  out  of  his  face  as  it  turned  to  a  mask  of  a  spirit- 
ual beauty  and  strength  that  shocked  and  offended  his 
wife,  so  little  had  she  suspected  it  in  his  life.  Yet  she 
could  not  but  realise  it:  there  was  the  shock  of  truth 
upon  her  mind,  and  as  a  widow  she  was  vowed  to  him  as 
she  never  had  been  as  a  wife,  and  with  all  the  obstinacy 
of  her  nature,  she  was  more  firmly  in  revolt  against  the 
vulgarity  of  the  butcher  and  the  shop.  She  cut  them 
right  out  of  her  life  and,  now  that  he  was  dead,  set  the 
Rev.  T.  Lawrie,  A.M.,  above  all  the  Keiths  with  their 
lands,  and  their  ancestors,  knights  and  courtiers  though 
some  of  them  had  been.  And  when  the  Keiths  conde- 
scended to  the  children  of  the  Rev.  T.  Lawrie  she  routed 
them,  applied  to  the  Widows'  Pension  Fund,  put  on  her 
jack  boots  and  rode  into  the  nearest  town  where  there 
was  a  good  academy.  There  she  took  a  wee  house,  gasp- 
ing at  the  thought  of  the  rent  before  she  knew  whether 
she  was  going  to  have  an  income  or  no. 

However,  there  came  the  assurance  that  she  would  have 
ninety  pounds  a  year  and  she  vacated  the  manse  without 
telling  her  brother  or  anyone  in  the  parish  except  Doctor 
M'Phail,  who  in  the  kindness  of  his  heart  made  her  an 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  A  FAMILY  13 

offer  of  forty  pounds  a  year  if  she  would  take  charge  of 
a  natural  child  of  his,  a  girl  of  seven,  and  bring  her  up 
with  her  own  family.  The  offer  was  rejected  without 
indignation,  but  Margaret  promised  that  she  would,  as 
far  as  possible,  keep  an  eye  on  the  child,  who,  otherwise, 
would  be  left  to  the  mercies  of  her  mother,  a  feckless 
trollop  though  a  beauty.  The  Doctor  had  been  the  best 
friend  of  the  minister  and  his  talk  had  been  the  widow's 
greatest  comfort: 

"We'll  not  have  another  minister  like  him.  Strong  at 
the  praying,  he  was,  without  being  terrible.  His  preach- 
ing could  turn  the  whole  congregation  of  wicked  sinners 
like  myself  into  little  children.  Aye,  he  was  a  poet,  and 
had  he  lived  we  should  have  had  a  new  paraphrase  of  the 
Psalms.  When  I  look  at  his  sons  I  wonder  if  any  of  'em 
will  beat  him,  will  there  be  one  that  has  the  gift  was  in 
him,  though  he  but  half  knew  it  himself.  There's  Tom  the 
spit  of  yourself,  and  John's  a  flesher  blood  and  bone.  I 
would  say  Jamie  had  most  of  his  father's  sweetness  but 
for  the  awful  rages  he  will  get  into.  A  good  lad  that,  but 
there's  his  mark  on  every  one  of  his  brothers  and  sisters 
as  you  know." 

Until  her  widowhood  Margaret  had  taken  her  children 
in  the  lump,  Jamie,  Tom,  John,  Margaret  and  Mary,  as 
good  Keiths.  As  she  watched  them  now,  she  decided  that 
the  two  girls  were  Keiths,  Jamie  with  his  terrible  temper 
unaccountable,  and  Tom  pure  Lawrie  in  spirit,  with  John 
mere  Lawrie  in  flesh.  In  feature  Tom  was  the  most  like 
his  father,  but  he  had  his  mother's  expression,  who  there- 
fore, loved  him  with  more  than  maternal  love.  It  was 
Tom  who  would  be  the  good  boy  to  uphold  the  family, 
Tom  who  would  win  the  fame  denied  his  father  by  his 
early  death,  Tom  whose  destiny  his  brothers  and  sisters 


i4  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

must  serve  if  they  and  the  world  were  to  meet  on  good 
terms. 

There  was  something  of  revenge  in  Margaret's  spirit. 
If  the  world  would  only  allow  her  ninety  pounds  a  year 
with  which  to  prepare  her  children  to  make  a  figure  in  it, 
it  must  not  in  the  future  complain  if  when  the  time  came 
they  demanded  their  due  to  the  uttermost  farthing.  Eng- 
land was  a  rich  country.  There  were  Keiths  in  England 
getting  riches  out  of  her  and  making  themselves  fine  men, 
and  there  were  poor  lads  from  St.  John's  Town  and 
Motherwell  who  had  gone  over  into  England  and  were 
richer  even  than  any  of  the  Keiths.  The  Macleans  had 
already  a  Baronet  in  the  family  and  his  son  a  clerk  in 
the  House  of  Lords. 

Margaret  was  a  passionate  widow.  She  hated  being 
one  of  many  widows  receiving  charity  and  she  used  to 
say  to  Tom: 

"We'll  pay  them  back,  won't  we,  Tommy  ?  Ten  years 
at  most  will  be  nine  hundred  pounds.  We'll  pay  that 
back  easy  when  we're  rich  and  you're  a  fine  man." 

And  Tom  used  to  say : 

"It's  Jamie'll  be  the  grand  man.  He's  the  one  at  the 
academy,  except  in  the  arithmetic,  where  he's  a  born  fool. 
I  can  beat  him  at  the  arithmetic  and  John  would  if  he 
weren't  a  lazy  gowk.  Besides  Jamie'll  be  the  first  to  go." 


CHAPTER    II 

CHILDHOOD     DAYS 


THE  wee  house  in  which  the  Lawries  were  brought 
up  was  in  a  small  grey  town  on  the  sea  looking  over 
to  the  hills  of  Cumberland.  These  were  their  Blue  Moun- 
tains beyond  which  lay  adventure  and  five  kingdoms  each 
waiting  for  its  prince  or  princess.  Four  kingdoms  and  a 
half  would  be  more  accurate,  for,  when  John  thought  of 
his,  he  decided  that  he  would  have  to  sell  half  of  it  in 
order  to  have  some  money  by  him.  He  had  already  begun 
to  put  by  his  bawbees,  whereas  Tom  used  to  lend  his  upon 
interest  to  Jamie,  who  would  squander  all  he  laid  hands 
on  in  buying  fishing  tackle  or  kites — he  was  a  great  one 
for  kite-flying — or  goodies  and  ribbons  for  the  lassies,  his 
sisters  and  others.  He  crippled  himself  for  weeks  once 
in  order  to  buy  his  sister  Mary,  the  only  student  of  the 
family,  a  copy  of  Lempriere's  Classical  Dictionary  in 
which  to  verify  her  references  in  the  verses  she  was 
always  writing,  though  he  would  tease  her  over  her  pro- 
ductions until  she  wept.  His  unkindness,  however,  was 
forgotten  in  his  generosity  and  she  was  more  devoted  to 
him  than  he  knew  and  often  saved  him  from  the  conse- 
quences of  his  escapades  both  at  home  and  at  the  acad- 
emy. She  would  help  him  with  his  arithmetic  and  got 
him  to  teach  her  Greek,  as  he  learned  it,  for  as  a  girl  she 
was  precluded  from  that  study.  As  a  result  Greek  was 

15 


16  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  only  subject  to  which  he  applied  himself,  for  all  the 
others  he  took  easily  and  brilliantly,  digesting  just  enough 
to  satisfy  or  to  hoodwink  the  dominie.  The  only  two 
prizes  he  ever  got  were  for  Greek  and  for  Latin  verses, 
and  both  these  with  performances  so  excellent  that  the 
dominie,  lifted  by  enthusiasm  above  routine,  had  visions 
of  an  education  leading  even  unto  Parnassus,  or,  failing 
that,  a  Professor's  chair.  He  called  on  Margaret  and 
praised  Jamie  to  the  skies,  not  only  as  a  scholar,  but  also 
as  a  moral  influence. 

"It  is  fine,"  he  said,  "how  they  look  up  to  him.  It  is 
the  dream  of  every  schoolmaster  to  have  a  boy  like  that 
pass  through  his  hands,  to  have  at  least  one  name  rising 
above  the  crowd  of  ministers  and  farmers  and  clerks  that 
constitute  his  enormous  and  dour  family." 

"Aye,"  said  Margaret,  "you'll  hear  of  my  sons." 

"The  lad  should  go  to  Edinburgh,  not  only  for  the 
learning,  but  for  his  character,  to  be  among  great  men, 
in  a  city  where  he  can  see  any  day  illustrious  men  shed- 
ding their  lustre  upon  the  streets." 

"I've  good  promises  for  my  sons,"  replied  Margaret. 
"They're  to  go  among  the  English." 

"That's  a  pity,"  said  the  dominie. 

"Pity?  My  brothers  and  cousins  are  there.  It  is  a 
great  rich  country." 

"It  is  a  country  without  character  if  history  goes  for 
anything,  though  I'll  not  deny  they  have  great  universi- 
ties." 

"There'll  be  no  university  where  my  sons  are  going, 
except  the  university  of  life." 

"There  are  some  characters  need  stiffening  for  that." 

"Would  you  send  my  son  Tom  to  the  university  ?" 

"I  would  not.    He's  a  good  lad,  Tom,  but  no  scholar." 

"He  has  twice  the  sense  of  his  brother." 


CHILDHOOD  DAYS 


"I'm  not  denying  that.     Sense  isn't  everything." 

"It  has  been  to  me."  Margaret  was  growing  impatient 
with  the  melancholy  man's  insistence  on  a  project  which 
she  had  no  intention  of  considering.  "It  has  been  to  me. 
Where  would  I  be  without  it?" 

"Well,  I'll  give  Jamie  his  due.  He'll  find  his  own  way 
out." 

"Aye,"  replied  Margaret,  "and  Tom  will  find  a  way 
out  for  all  of  us." 

That  in  effect  was  Margaret's  programme  for  Tom. 
She  could  take  charge  of  him  as  she  never  could  of  Jamie, 
who  had  adopted  a  position  separate  from  and  annoyingly 
above  the  family.  There  was  no  assertiveness  about  him. 
He  maintained  his  position  rather  by  absence  of  opinions 
than  by  any  expression  of  them.  Obedient  and  consid- 
erate to  his  mother,  he  had,  she  felt,  enormous  reserva- 
tions in  his  acceptance  of  her  authority.  He  eluded  her, 
not  as  his  father  had  done  with  a  touching  and  inspiring 
smile,  but  with  a  nervous  blankness  that  was  almost  de- 
fiance. In  this  he  was  entirely  without  support.  Even 
Mary  was  secret  in  the  allegiance  she  owed  him  and  was 
openly  against  him  in  the  periods  of  disgrace  to  which 
he  was  by  general  consent  damned  after  his  "rages." 

These  had  been  frequent  in  him  when  he  was  a  child, 
nearly  always  inexplicable,  coming  with  hardly  a  sign  of 
a  storm,  tearing  out  of  him  in  his  exasperation  at  some 
stupidity  in  Tom,  some  slyness  in  John,  or  some  slavish- 
ness  in  his  sisters.  Only  once  did  he  turn  on  his  mother. 

He  was  working  in  the  kitchen,  writing  an  essay  for  a 
prize  (which  he  did  not  win).  His  mother  was  cooking 
at  the  same  table  and,  being  rather  happy,  made  a  clatter 
with  her  spoons  and  dumped  down  her  pastry-board  with 
a  careless  slam.  He  did  not  mind  that,  but  when  she  as- 
sumed a  kindly  voice  and  said :  "There'll  be  pastry  bits 


18  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

to-night,  Jamie,"  he  growled  out :  "I'd  liefer  you'd  give 
them  to  the  pigs."— '"Pigs,  indeed !"— "Ay,  they're  better 
than  we  are  wi'  our  damned  pride.  Aye,  I'd  liefer  be 
one  in  a  sow's  litter  than  what  I  am."  He  said  this  in  a 
thin  furious  voice  that  showed  all  the  blistering  heat  that 
was  in  him. 

Margaret  stared  at  him,  took  up  a  spoon,  put  it  down 
and  took  it  up  again. 

"Leave  the  room,"  she  said. 

Jamie  took  up  his  essay  and  tore  it  across  and  across, 
crumpled  the  pieces  up  and  thrust  them  into  his  trousers 
pocket.  Then  with  a  sob  he  plunged  out  of  the  room,  be- 
wildered, angry,  blind  with  shame,  shaken  with  a  despair- 
ing mortification  at  his  inability  to  understand  what  it 
was  in  himself  that  could  so  break  down  his  control  and 
mock  his  natural  desire  for  affection,  peace,  good-humour. 
He  did  not  even  know  what  he  had  said — something 
about  pigs — so  complete  was  the  possession  under  which 
he  laboured.  The  pain  in  his  mother's  face  was  clear 
enough,  but  not  less  clear  than  the  anger  and  the  injured 
pride  and  outraged  authority,  things  which  that  power 
in  him  must  deny.  It  was  not  enough  to  avoid  them. 
That  was  somehow  mean  and  revolting  to  him.  Not  to 
give  her  pain  would  have  been  sweet  to  him  if  there 
could  have  been  any  other  means  of  escaping  it.  There 
was  none.  The  wrath  had  to  be  evaded  or  faced  and 
he  could  not  but  do  the  last. 

He  was  fifteen  when  he  was  guilty  of  this  explosion 
and  his  mother  chose  to  punish  him  by  sewing  up  his 
trousers  pockets,  saying  as  she  did  so  that  it  would  keep 
his  hands  out  of  them  and  prevent  him  slouching.  Also, 
she  refused  to  speak  to  him  and  addressed  herself  to  him 
when  necessary  through  his  brothers.  He  kept  his  mouth 
shut  for  a  whole  fortnight  and  avoided  the  house  as  much 


CHILDHOOD  DAYS  19 

as  possible.  At  first  it  was  some  comfort  to  him  that  his 
disgrace  threw  a  shadow  over  the  whole  household,  but 
his  brothers  and  sisters  quickly  recovered  and  he  was  left 
to  grizzle  over  the  problem  of  his  inability  to  be  as  happy 
as  they.  What  brought  him  the  greatest  suffering  was 
that  he  could  not  remember  what  he  had  said;  not  the 
words,  hardly  the  sense,  though  the  feeling  was  plain 
enough :  only  too  plainly  evil.  Only  the  evil,  the  sins 
denounced  in  the  kirk  by  the  minister  had  a  terrifying 
effect  on  him;  they  were  disgusting  in  their  cold  malig- 
nancy. This  thing  was  all  of  whirling  fire  and  magnifi- 
cently strong,  bearing  the  weight  of  his  ordinarily  de- 
spondent personality  as  easily  as  a  feather.  But  it  was 
unrecognised  and  ignored:  only  its  strange  effect  upon 
himself  was  seen  and  regarded  as  a  nuisance,  so  that  he 
was  denied  the  affection  for  which  he  hungered. 

Only  Mary  was  unable  to  bear  his  silence  and  to  leave 
it  to  him  to  break  it.  She  was  worried  because  he  was 
getting  into  trouble  at  the  academy,  for  leaving  his  tasks 
undone.  One  night  she  followed  him  up  to  the  room  he 
shared  with  Tom  and  found  him  glaring  out  of  the  win- 
dow into  the  neighbour's  garden.  She  sat  on  the  bed  and 
opened  the  Anabasis  of  Xenophon  on  which  he  should 
have  been  working  and  started  to  construe  the  sixteen 
lines  he  had  to  do  for  the  morning,  and  to  write  down  the 
words,  Greek  and  English,  alternately. 

"What  are  you  doing,  wee  Mary  ?" 

"I'm  doing  our  Greek,  Jamie." 

"To  hell  wi'  the  Greek,"  he  said.  "I'll  soon  be  finished 
wi'  the  academy  and  all  that.  A  wish  I  could  be  a  man 
all  at  once,  I  do." 

"For  why?" 

"I'd  understand  a  thing  or  two,  then,  maybe.  Ech!  I 
hate  them  creeping  into  your  body  inch  by  inch,  I  do." 


20  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"Is  there  wunnerful  thoughts  in  your  head,  Jamie?" 

"Never  a  one." 

"Never  a  one?    Better  the  Greek  than  nothing." 

Jamie  flung  himself  on  the  bed,  and  together  they 
plodded  through  the  page  of  the  wisdom  of  Socrates. 
It  was  hard  for  the  boy  to  keep  his  attention  fixed.  Sud- 
denly he  sat  up  and  said : 

"I'd  feel  better,  wee  Mary,  if  I  didna  think  Tom  sic  a 
terrible  fule." 

"Tom!  Ye  mustn't  judge." 

"I  dinna  judge,  I  know." 

With  that  he  began  to  whistle.    Then  he  laughed. 

"We're  all  planned  for,  to  be  put  out,  me  in  the  Keith 
mills  to  keep  a  place  warm  for  Tom.  You're  to  go  out  to 
the  Edinburgh  Keiths,  that's  Mrs.  Forshaw,  to  be  a  gover- 
ness and  to  make  footprints  for  Margaret  to  step  in.  I've 
been  thinking  of  Napoleon  and  wondering  what  he  would 
do  in  the  like  circumstances.  He  wasn't  so  unlike  me, 
with  a  wonderful  mother  and  all." 

"The  idea!    Napoleon!" 

"Not  so  like  neither.  I  would  hate  to  be  a  soldier. 
I'd  rather  die." 

"D'you  think  you'll  remember  the  Greek  to-morrow?" 

"I'll  make  a  show.  You're  a  good  little  maggot,  wee 
Mary,  and  I'll  read  your  poems  to-night,  and  I'll  go  down 
and  tell  my  mother  I'm  a  beast  and  a  pollution  of  the  air 
she  and  her  children  breathe."  He  drew  in  his  breath, 
for  he  had  just  remembered  what  he  had  said  to  her.  "By 
gorm !"  he  cried.  "What  a !" 

"What  is  it?"  asked  Mary. 

"The  things  in  my  head'll  no  fit  into  yours." 

With  that  he  went  down  into  the  kitchen  and  apologised 
to  his  mother,  who  told  him  she  was  proud  of  him  and 
bade  him  never  forget  that  he  was  a  Keith  as  well  as  a 


CHILDHOOD  DAYS  21 

Lawrie,  and,  to  boot,  a  minister's  son.  These  were  then 
three  good  reasons  why  it  behoved  him  not  to  be  as  other 
men. 

Margaret  had  been  and  still  was  rather  frightened  and 
was  talking  her  way  back  to  assurance.  Jamie  was  much 
too  fearful  of  her  to  conceive  that  such  could  be  her  case 
and  she  seemed  to  him  only  to  be  taking  an  unfair  ad- 
vantage of  his  apology.  He  was  filled  with  resentment 
and  disliked  being  told  not  to  be  as  other  men  when  there 
were  so  many  whom  he  could  admire  and  wish  to  love. — - 
Doctor  M'Phail,  Ben  Lamont,  the  minister's  son,  who  was 
at  Oxford  University,  the  Customs  officer  and  Farquhar- 
son,  the  tailor,  and  his  Uncle  Shiel,  who  was  a  farmer  in 
the  Glen  Kens  and  with  his  open  house  gave  his  nephews 
and  nieces  a  happiness  to  which  they  could  turn  from  the 
ambitious  future  that,  whether  they  liked  it  or  not, 
awaited  them.  As  a  matter  of  fact  they  never  consid- 
ered whether  they  liked  it.  They  were  taught  that  they 
must  rise  above  ninety  pounds  a  year — charity  at  that — 
and  their  superiority  to  the  people  who  lived  in  houses 
similar  to  their  own  was,  outside  their  assumption  of  it, 
real  enough  to  make  their  soaring  future  axiomatic.  The 
success  of  Jamie  and  Mary  in  book-learning  was  fortified 
by  the  physical  prowess  of  Tom  and  John,  who,  though 
they  fought  like  terriers  with  each  other,  were  instantly 
combined  against  any  onslaught  upon  either.  As  for 
Margaret,  she  was  a  beautiful  child,  and  everybody  loved 
her  and  thought  her  much  too  good  for  this  earth,  an 
opinion  which  she  accepted  as  gracefully  as  she  did  every- 
thing and  with  a  deprecating  indifference  which  gave  her 
for  all  but  John,  who  hated  her,  a  potent  charm. 

Altogether  they  were  a  happy  family  in  a  place  and  a 
country  where  happiness  was  never  too  common.  Their 
living  was  hard  and  their  food  was  plain  and  they  were 


22  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

given  to  understand  that  though  their  future  would  be 
splendid  it  would  certainly  not  be  easy.  Margaret  was 
shrewd  enough  and  very  skilful  at  imbuing  her  children 
with  a  proper  spirit.  She  did  not  interfere  overmuch  with 
their  quarrels  among  themselves  but  only  when  their  con- 
duct was  in  any  detail  unworthy  of  the  family,  of  a  father 
who  was  surely  an  angel,  of  a  mother  who,  in  spite  of  all 
obstacles,  had  kept  the  home  together,  and  by  force  of 
character  had  turned  disadvantage  to  advantage.  Tom 
particularly  was  often  regaled  with  stories  of  the  men 
from  the  countryside  who,  without  birth  and  with  small 
education,  had  gone  to  the  mills  of  Lanarkshire  or  Lan- 
cashire, "got  on"  and  become  fine  men. 

"Oh  aye,"  Tom  used  to  say,  "I'll  get  on." 

"And  you'll  not  forget  your  brothers  and  sisters." 

"I'll  not  forget  my  mother." 

Then  Margaret  would  embrace  him  and  tell  him  she 
was  sure  he  would  never  do  that. 

So  intent  was  she  on  preparing  her  sons  for  success 
that  she  lost  sight  of  their  moral  education  and  assumed 
that,  as  sons  of  a  minister,  their  religion  must  be  satis- 
factory. The  Sabbath  was  observed  rigidly  in  her  house. 
The  blinds  were  down  all  day  and  no  book  was  allowed 
to  be  read  but  the  Bible,  and  here  again  Jamie  got  into 
trouble,  for  he  was  found  to  have  torn  the  pages  out  of 
his  Bible  and  substituted  those  of  The  Faerie  Queene. 
When  he  was  asked  why  he  had  done  this  thing  he  said : 

"I  prefer't." 

But  his  treasure  was  confiscated  and  burned  for  an 
abortion,  an  unholy  book  in  holy  covers. 

For  a  few  Sundays  after  that  trouble  Margaret  made 
her  eldest  son,  for  his  good,  read  aloud  to  her  from  the 
Bible,  but  he  would  read  nothing  but  the  genealogical 
tables,  saying  that  begat  was  a  good  word  and  would 


CHILDHOOD  DAYS  23 

make  a  fine  oath.  Here  he  discovered  his  mother's  one 
weakness  towards  him.  His  comical,  solemn  way  of  say- 
ing absurdities  appealed  to  her  sense  of  humour  and  when 
he  spoke  to  her  then  she  could  never  keep  up  her  stern 
front.  But  because  he  made  her  laugh  she  distrusted  him 
only  the  more  and  would  write  long  letters  about  him  to 
Doctor  M'Phail  or  her  cousin,  Shiel.  The  Doctor  had 
Jamie  to  stay  with  him  a  few  months  before  he  was  to 
go  on  his  adventure  into  the  world,  observed  the  boy 
carefully,  drew  him  out,  stirred  up  his  pride  by  laughing 
at  him,  came  to  his  own  conclusions  and  wrote  to  Mar- 
garet : 

"The  boy  has  no  danger  but  his  own  innards.  I've 
warned  him  and  recommended  Turkey  rhubarb.  He  was 
interested  and  asked  questions  about  himself.  He's  been 
at  my  books  too,  the  rogue.  I've  done  for  him  what  I 
imagine  his  own  blessed  father  would  have  done  and  now 
we  must  throw  him  out  to  sink  or  swim." 

The  Doctor  gave  Jamie  a  copy  of  Burns's  Poems  and  a 
golden  sovereign  with  King  William's  head  on  it.  When 
he  got  home  he  gave  it  to  Tom;  who,  with  help  from 
John,  produced  seventeen  shillings  in  silver  for  it,  recoup- 
ing himself  for  a  long  outstanding  loan,  with  interest,  of 
two  shillings  and  sixpence.  Four  shillings  were  spent  on 
a  feast  in  honour  of  the  departure  for  the  foundations  of 
the  family  fortune,  three  were  given  to  Mary  towards  a 
set  of  the  Waverley  Novels  which  she  coveted,  and  the 
rest  disappeared  in  the  purchase  of  knives  and  goodies 
and  fishing  hooks  for  school  friends.  To  disguise  this 
reckless  expenditure,  ten  shillings  had  to  be  borrowed 
from  Tom  on  a  promise  to  repay  out  of  the  first  month's 
salary. 


24  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Mary  packed  her  brother's  wooden  chest  for  him  and 
moistened  his  shirts  with  her  tears.  Margaret  painted 
him  a  text,  "The  Greatest  of  These  is  Charity,"  and  Tom 
and  John  bought  him  a  walking-stick.  Farquharson  the 
tailor  had  made  him  what  he  called  an  English  suit,  and 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  wore  a  collar  of  the  type 
made  popular  by  Lord  Byron,  the  martyr  to  liberty,  who 
had  died  on  Mary's  brithday,  at  Missolonghi. 

The  whole  family  walked  out  to  the  carrier's  to  say 
farewell  and  Jamie  alarmed  them  all  and  disgusted  Tom 
by  bursting  into  tears.  He  was  thinking  that  he  might 
not  see  them  or  the  country  he  had  loved  to  roam  in  for 
years,  and  when  the  carrier  drove  off  and  his  kinsfolk 
were  soon  out  of  sight  he  was  sick  with  a  feeling  of  lone- 
liness and  enraged  by  his  inability  to  imagine  what  he  was 
going  towards.  He  yearned  after  his  mother  and  ached 
to  be  with  her  and  to  stay  by  her  side,  to  repair  the  lone- 
liness from  which  she  too,  in  his  imagination,  had  suf- 
fered. But  he  was  soon  seized  with  a  natural  young 
curiosity,  watching  the  horses,  the  driver,  the  other  occu- 
pants of  the  cart,  the  hills  diminishing  as  they  were  ap- 
proached, feeling  for  the  whiskers  which  he  hoped  were 
appearing  on  his  cheeks,  and  every  ten  minutes  pulling  out 
of  his  fob  the  new  watch  sent  to  him  by  his  Uncle  Shiel. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  WIDE,  WIDE  WORLD 


IT  is  time  to  give  my  readers  a  hint  as  to  the  period 
through  which  they  are  to  follow  the  establishment 
of  the  illustrious  family,  over  whose  members  they  have 
the  advantage  of  knowing  the  history  of  the  time.  Such 
an  advantage  is  unfair  and  if  they  are  to  understand 
James  and  his  kinsfolk  they  must  forget  it  and  remember 
only  that  Queen  Victoria  had  lately  ascended  the  throne, 
that  ships  had  recently  crossed  the  Atlantic  under  steam 
and  that,  though  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  long  since 
dead,  yet  he  was  in  the  imaginations  of  all  men  the  most 
lively  figure,  the  arrivist  who  had  arrived,  but,  being  only 
a  Frenchman,  he  had  had  to  depart.  Had  he  been  an 
Englishman,  a  la  bonne  heure!  It  was  annoying  to  have 
a  chit  of  a  girl  on  the  throne,  but  Englishmen  could 
always  smile  at  Fate  and  show  themselves  gentlemen. 
As  for  the  Scots,  being  romantic,  and,  thanks  to  John 
Knox,  educated,  they  could  beat  the  English  at  their  own 
game,  because  they  could  regard  it  as  a  means  and  not 
as  an  end.  They  were  charged  with  destiny,  the  service 
of  the  clan,  and  a  shining  name  was  of  more  worth  to 
them  than  riches,  though  these  were  necessary  for  secur- 
ity's sake,  a  guarantee  that  their  light  would  not  be  hid. 
It  was  almost  a  tradition  in  the  Keith  family,  for  in- 
stance, that  the  English  were  soft  and  slow,  a  blind  race, 

25 


26  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

tripping  their  way  along,  and  needing  a  dog  to  guide 
them.  James  Lawrie's  head  was  full  of  this  tradition  on 
his  long,  uncomfortable  journey  by  sea  and  land.  He 
was  very  sick  on  the  water  and  very  cold  on  the  land,  for 
it  was  early  spring  and  dirty  weather  and  he  took  his  first 
railway  journey  over  the  thirty  miles  from  the  coast  to 
Thrigsby  without  marvelling  at  it.  The  smell  of  the  en- 
gine on  the  Glasgow  packet-boat  had  given  him  a  fierce 
hatred  of  machinery  driven  by  steam,  and  the  discomfort 
of  the  open  truck  called  a  third-class  carriage  made  him 
incapable  of  anything  but  a  longing  for  his  journey's  end. 
When  at  last  he  reached  it  and  was  turned  out  with  his 
chest  he  sat  on  it  shivering,  with  his  mind  a  blank,  so 
utterly  was  he  disappointed  by  the  aspect  of  the  city  in 
which  he  was  to  seek  his  fortune.  It  was  so  black,  so 
huddled,  so  ungenial,  with  its  tall  chimneys  and  slate 
roofs,  dank  and  wet  under  the  rain.  It  looked  mean  and 
poverty-stricken,  disordered  and  uncared  for.  And  there 
was  not  a  soul  in  the  station  to  speak  to  him  or  even  to 
notice  him.  Also  for  many  hours  he  had  had  nothing  to 
eat :  his  stomach  was  protesting  and  he  hardly  cared  what 
became  of  him. 

He  tried  once  to  accost  a  stranger  in  his  best  English 
but  it  was  not  understood,  nor  could  he  make  anything  of 
the  stranger's  speech.  Then  he  was  overcome  with  shy- 
ness and  could  attempt  no  more.  For  half-an-hour  he 
sat  on  his  chest,  deciding  that  he  would  leave  it  there  and 
walk  home  or  run  away  to  a  war. 

At  last  he  was  greeted  by  a  woman  who  said  he  was 
a  likely  lad  and  had  a  lucky  face,  in  itself  a  gift  sufficient 
to  put  heart  into  a  creature.  Doctor  M'Phail  had  warned 
him  against  women  and  he  was  filled  with  dread.  How- 
ever, there  was  so  much  kindness  in  her  face  and  she 
was  so  persistent  in  her  attentions  that  at  last  he  loosened 


THE  WIDE,  WIDE  WORLD  27 

his  tongue  and  told  her  he  was  a  Scotsman  come  to  be 
placed  in  the  world  with  his  kinsman,  Andrew  Keith. 

"Andrew  Keith,  is  it?"  said  she.  "Well  I  never!  Why 
Andrew  Keith  lives  just  round  the  corner  from  me." 

At  this  point  she  was  joined  by  a  little  undersized  man 
with  enormous  shoulders  and  a  birth-mark  over  one  eye. 

"Eh!  Mike,"  she  said,  "isn't  that  lucky.  Here's  An- 
drew Keith's  own  nevvy  come  to  Thrigsby  and  no  one  to 
meet  him.  You  can  carry  his  chest  home  and  him  and 
me'll  go  off  and  have  summat  t'eat  and  join  you  later." 

She  took  Jamie  by  the  arm  and  led  him  slowly  out  of 
the  station,  he  looking  back  for  his  chest,  and  not  daring 
to  protest  in  his  anxiety  not  to  make  a  fool  of  himself  in 
his  first  encounter  with  the  great  world  of  England. 
Mike  had  hoisted  the  chest  onto  his  broad  shoulders  and 
came  lurching  and  staggering  after  them.  The  woman 
talked  all  the  time. 

"We've  heard  tell  you  was  coming,"  she  said.  "There's 
always  a  deal  o'  talk  about  Andrew  Keith  and  his  doings. 
The  good-looking  Keiths  they're  called  in  Thrigsby,  and 
it  was  said  that  the  best  favoured  of  'em  all  was  coming." 

Mike  had  caught  them  up,  passed  them  and  disappeared 
at  a  run  round  the  corner.  Realising  that  he  had  made  a 
fool  of  himself,  Jamie  started  to  run  after  him,  but  when 
he  turned  the  corner  there  was  no  sight  of  the  man; 
neither,  on  retracing  his  steps,  could  he  discover  trace 
of  the  woman.  He  went  cold  with  shame  and  dread  of 
the  confession  he  would  have  to  make  to  his  uncle.  It 
was  growing  dusk  and  he  determined  to  make  his  way 
to  Clibran  Hall,  where  presumably  he  was  expected,  to 
pretend  that  he  had  lost  his  luggage  on  the  railway  and 
so  bury  the  tale  of  his  folly  for  ever. 

Clibran  Hall  was  a  couple  of  miles  out  from  the  centre 
of  the  town,  half-way  to  the  weaving  village  of  Clure, 


28  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

which  young  Lawrie  reached  before  he  discovered  he  had 
passed  the  house  he  was  seeking.  When  he  asked  at  an 
inn  how  far  he  was  from  Andrew  Keith's  house,  a  man 
sitting  in  the  bar  parlour  spat  on  the  floor,  raised  his  pint 
pot  and  threw  its  contents  in  the  boy's  face,  growling  out 
words  in  the  unintelligible  language  of  the  place.  How- 
ever, the  landlord  of  the  inn  bade  the  man  behave  him- 
self and  told  Jamie  he  must  go  back  two  miles  until  he 
came  to  a  great  yellow  house  with  a  hornbeam  by  the 
gate.  Jamie  remembered  the  house  but  could  not  imagine 
that  any  relative  of  his  could  live  in  so  huge  a  mansion.  It 
was  three  times  as  big  as  Ardross,  the  home  of  the  Keiths. 

He  had  begun  now  to  recover  from  his  mortification  at 
the  loss  of  his  chest,  feeling  quite  sure  that  he  would  be 
able  to  carry  it  off  with  a  lie,  which  he  had  enjoyed  in- 
venting down  to  the  smallest  detail.  His  arrival  among 
the  English  had  become  more  interesting  to  him  and  he 
was  so  filled  with  admiration  for  his  lie  as  a  lie  that  he 
thought  of  telling  Andrew  Keith  the  truth  first  and  the 
lie  afterwards,  so  that  he  too  might  appreciate  and  ad- 
mire. His  Uncle  Shiel  would  certainly  have  done  so,  and 
he  imagined  Andrew  Keith  to  be  not  unlike  Uncle  Shiel. 
Great  was  his  disappointment  then,  when,  on  his  admis- 
sion to  the  great  yellow  house,  he  was  taken  in  charge 
by  a  red-faced  butler,  who,  on  hearing  his  name,  told 
him  he  was  to  wait. 

"But  I'm  expected,"  said  Jamie,  smelling  good  roast 
mutton  and  getting  very  hungry.  "Mr.  Keith's  my  uncle, 
and  I've  come  all  the  way  from  Scotland." 

"Mr.  Keith  is  at  dinner  and  is  not  to  be  disturbed." 

Jamie  was  turned  into  a  little  den  of  a  library  that 
reeked  of  stale  tobacco  smoke,  and  was  crowded  from 
floor  to  ceiling  with  books.  On  a  table  was  a  tray  with 
glasses,  a  decanter  of  wine  and  a  biscuit-box.  Jamie  took 


THE  WIDE,  WIDE  WORLD  29 

down  Tom  Jones  and  was  soon  deep  in  it,  sitting  near  the 
biscuits  and  nibbling  at  them  until  he  realised  to  his  dis- 
may that  he  had  eaten  them  all. — "No  luck  to-day,"  he 
thought  and  started  out  on  another  lie.  It  was  not  half 
ready  when  the  door  opened  and  Andrew  Keith  entered. 

"Hum,  ha!"  he  said,  bringing  his  lips  close  together 
and  blowing  out  his  nostrils.  "Hum,  ha.  Reading,  are 
we?" 

Jamie  jumped  to  his  feet  and  stood  blushing  and  anx- 
ious. Andrew  held  out  two  fingers,  which  his  nephew 
seized  and  shook  roughly. 

"Manners,  manners.  Stand  up  and  let  me  have  a  look 
at  you.  Would  we  like  a  glass  of  Madeira  wine  after  our 
journey?  A  glass  of  wine  and  a  biscuit." 

His  face  was  still  shining  with  the  good  dinner  he  had 
eaten.  Jamie  shook  with  rage  as  he  said  it  and  forgot 
his  lie  about  the  biscuits.  His  uncle  looked  into  the  box, 
guessed  what  had  happened  and  clapped  the  lid  on  it 
again  without  a  word.  Then  he  poured  out  half-a-glass 
of  Madeira  and  handed  it  to  his  nephew,  sank  back  into 
a  big  horsehair  chair,  and,  placing  spectacles  on  his  jut- 
ting nose,  proceeded  to  inspection. 

"A  reg'lar  Lawrie,"  he  said.  "Drink  your  wine,  boy. 
You  won't  be  able  to  afford  wine  this  many  a  year.  And 
now  tell  we  what  you  want  to  do,  how  you  left  your  good 
mother,  what  kind  of  a  journey  you  had  and  what  you 
saw  by  the  way." 

Andrew  Keith  had  a  large  white  face  surrounded 
with  a  thin  fringe  of  grey  whisker,  a  long  chin  that  sank 
deep  into  his  chest  as  he  looked  up  with  his  small  keen 
eyes  under  their  puckered  lids.  He  wore  a  white  silk  tie 
filling  in  the  aperture  of  his  low-cut  waistcoat,  and  seem- 
ing to  the  alarmed  boy  an  extension  of  his  face.  Jamie 
stuttered  out: 


30  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"I — I  was  very  sick  on  the  boat." 

"Ah,  hum.  No  steamboats  when  I  made  the  journey; 
no  railways;  glad  enough  we  were  in  those  days  of  the 
Duke's  Canal.  Ah !  It's  all  made  easy  for  you  youngsters. 
Though  there's  the  same  rules  to  be  observed — fear  God, 
honour  the  King  and  your  parents  and  those  set  in  au- 
thority over  you,  apply  yourself  to  your  duty,  read  little 
but  wisely,  and  when  you  talk,  keep  all  your  words  in 
reason.  I — ah,  hum — am  going  to  give  you  a  thorough 
trial,  to  see  what  stuff  you  are  made  of,  for  your  mother's 
sake.  You  come  on  her  side  from  an  honourable  and  an 
ancient  family.  Keep  that  in  your  mind  in  all  your  deal- 
ings and  do  nothing  which  could  injure  its — ah — 'solid 
place  in  the  world.  You  will  begin,  as  I  began,  as  every 
young  man  should  begin,  at  the  bottom.  The  success  you 
meet  will  be  the  result  of  your  own  endeavours  and  my 
good  will — when  you  have  deserved  it. — Now,  what  is 
your  first  duty?" 

Jamie  glanced  nervously  round  the  comfortable  room. 
The  Madeira  wine  warming  up  his  little  clamorous  stom- 
ach had  made  him  light-headed.  He  hazarded : 

"To  get  rich.*'  At  once  he  knew  that  was  wrong  and 
replaced  it  with :  "To  be  an  honour  to  my  family." 

"Tut,"  said  Andrew.  "We'll  be  content  if  you're  no 
disgrace.  What  has  your  schooling  been  ?" 

"I've  a  prize  for  Latin  verses." 

"Oh  aye,  it's  good  to  be  a  scholar  when  you  have  your 
position,  but  not  till  then.  A  bit  of  the  Latin  is  very 
powerful  with  these  ignorant  folk  here.  But  that'll  do. 
Ye've  got  me  havering.  Ye  can  go  to  your  bed  now  and, 
when  you  say  your  prayers,  thank  God  for  it  and  think 
of  the  many  would  be  glad  of  it." 

He  shifted  his  wine-glass  from  his  right  hand  and  held 


THE  WIDE,  WIDE  WORLD  31 

out  two  fingers.  Jamie  remembered  his  chest,  hesitated 
and  trembled  out  his  lie. 

"A've  lost  ma  kist." 

"Your  chest,  lad?" 

"Aye,  wi'  a  new  suit,  and  three  sarks,  and  a  pair  of 
boots,  some  books,  a  box  o'  shortbread  and  a  kite." 

"Lost  your  chest?" 

"Aye.     It  was  the  railway  train." 

Andrew  brinked.  "They  screwed  your  head  on  for 
you  before  they  cut  your  apron  strings." 

The  taunt  so  enraged  Jamie  that  he  burst  into  tears  and 
blurted  out  the  truth  how  his  chest  had  been  stolen  from 
him  after  he  had  brought  it  safely  through  all  his  long 
journey.  His  uncle  became  kinder  then,  rose  from  his 
chair,  patted  his  shoulder  and  told  him  he  would  see 
the  police  in  the  morning.  The  bell  was  rung,  the  butler 
appeared,  received  instructions  to  find  a  nightshirt  and 
led  the  unhappy  James  off  to  an  enormous  room,  heavily 
curtained,  where  he  had  a  huge  four-poster  bed.  He 
shuffled  out  of  his  clothes  and  into  his  borrowed  night- 
shirt and  lay  terrifying  himself  with  the  idea  that  the  top 
of  the  four-poster  was  coming  down  slowly,  slowly  to 
suffocate  him. 

He  felt  very,  very  small  in  the  soft  feather  mattress 
which  billowed  up  on  either  side  of  him.  The  linen  sheets 
were  very  cold  to  his  body  and  he  missed  Tom,  without 
whom  he  had  not  slept  for  years.  .  .  .  The  world  on 
the  other  side  of  the  mountains  was  distressingly  large, 
black,  empty,  indifferent;  he  had  made  all  that  uncom- 
fortable, tedious  journey  to  find  a  great,  callous  world 
full  of  thieves  and  big- faced  uncles,  who  seemed  not  only 
indifferent  to  the  great  intention  with  which  he  had  come 
among  them,  but  even  hostile  to  it.  This  indifference, 
this  hostility  made  the  world  for  him  as  big,  as  stuffy,  as 


32  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

ominous  as  the  four-poster  bed  in  which  he  lay.  It  was 
a  cruel  denial  of  all  that  he  had  imagined.  Though  he 
had  chafed  against  the  small  life  at  home,  yet  there  had 
been  in  it  gems  of  liberty  which  were  despoiled  by  An- 
drew Keith  and  his  big  face,  his  big  yellow  house,  and  his 
big  four-poster.  The  Keiths  of  his  mother's  tales  had 
been  such  wonders  that  there  was  nothing  for  the  young 
Lawries  to  do  but  to  emulate  them,  and  Jamie,  knowing 
that  he  must,  felt  on  that  first  contact  with  them  that  he 
could  not. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE      PETER      LESLIES 


BREAKFAST  was  at  seven,  on  the  stroke,  and  this 
meal  Jamie  was  permitted  to  share  with  his  uncle. 
There  were  a  pork-pie  and  beer  for  Andrew :  porridge 
and  milk  for  the  boy:  and  honey  in  the  comb  for  both. 
After  a  decent  interval  they  set  out  for  the  counting- 
house  behind  Princess  Street.  It  was  a  square,  plain 
building,  among  other  square,  plain  buildings,  hard  by  a 
canal.  The  street  was  thronged  with  men  and  boys  going 
to  their  work,  and  already  there  were  drays  and  lorries 
clattering  over  the  cobbles.  Already  out  of  some  of  the 
square  buildings  came  the  whir  and  thud  of  engines.  The 
noise  and  the  bustle  awed  and  excited  Jamie.  He  began 
to  feel  important,  as  though  it  was  all  because  of  himself 
and  his  uncle.  The  men  on  the  pathway  made  room  for 
them  as  they  approached  and  some  of  them  said,  "Morn- 
ing, sir."  Then,  watching  his  uncle,  Jamie  saw  that  he 
was  taking  no  notice,  but  pursed  up  his  lips  and  tucked 
down  his  head  and  walked  a  little  quicker.  So  Jamie 
pursed  up  his  lips  and  tucked  down  his  head  and  walked 
a  little  quicker,  fixing  his  eye  on  the  brass  plate  which 
said  Keith  Bros.  &  Stevenson.  Inside  himself  he  cried : 
"That's  me,  James  Keith  Lawrie,"  and  indeed,  as  he 
crossed  the  threshold,  the  building  seemed  to  grow  per- 
ceptibly smaller,  only  to  swell  out  enormously  at  once,  as 

33 


34  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

he  realised  that  he  did  not  know  his  way  about  in  it.  He 
shambled  up  behind  his  uncle  and  followed  him  through  a 
roomful  of  young  men  (a  horrible  ordeal),  along  a  pass- 
age and  into  a  quiet,  remote  chamber  with  a  huge  desk, 
a  thick  Turkey  carpet,  a  loud-ticking  clock,  a  shelf  of 
books,  a  portrait  of  the  Duke  of  Bridgewater,  a  wooden 
model  of  a  steam-engine,  and  a  miniature  bust  of  Ark- 
wright.  Here  Andrew  Keith  seemed  to  be  more  sure  of 
himself  than  in  his  big  house;  his  manner  changed;  his 
face  grew  almost  animated.  He  took  out  his  watch  and 
compared  it  with  the  big  clock  which  he  could  see  through 
the  high  grimy  window.  It  wanted  two  minutes  to  nine. 
There  were  letters  on  the  table.  He  fingered  these, 
pleased  to  have  so  large  a  pile  of  them.  At  last  he 
cleared  his  throat  and  addressed  Jamie  : 

"This  is  where  you  will  begin  your  career.  Find  your 
way  about  the  office  and  the  warehouse  and  then  we  will 
give  you  a  spell  at  the  mill.  You  will  be  given  every 
opportunity  to  learn  every  side  of  the  trade  because  you 
are  my  nephew,  but  while  you  are  learning  you  must  for- 
get that  you  are  my  nephew." 

"Yes,"  said  Jamie. 

"You  may  come  to  see  me  every  other  Sunday,  but 
here  in  the  office  we  shall  only  meet  as  employer  and 
employee:" 

"Yes,"  said  Jamie. 

"Much  will  depend  on  your  choice  of  friends  and  in 
that  it  would  be  well  for  you  to  remember  who  you  are." 

Jamie  was  suffering  from  a  reaction  and  the  only  echo 
this  saying  found  in  him  was  the  question :  "Who  am  I  ?" 

Andrew  continued : 

"It  only  remains  to  warn  you  against  the  temptations 
of  a  great  city,  but  a  young  man  with  so  good  a  mother 
as  you  have  had  should  be  able  to  resist  them." 


THE  PETER  LESLIES  35 

"Yes,"  said  Jamie,  rather  pleasantly  excited  by  the 
warning. 

"Above  all,  keep  clear  of  politics  until  you  have  an 
income  and  a  vote  to  steady  you." 

A  middle-aged  man  entered  and  wished  Mr.  Keith 
good-morning. 

"My  kinsman,  James  Lawrie,"  said  Andrew. 

The  middle-aged  man  grunted : 

"In  my  room,  sir?" 

"No.  He  is  to  begin  with  Leslie.  Tell  Leslie  I  wish 
to  see  him  and  come  back  yourself  when  he  is  gone." 

The  middle-aged  man  disappeared  and  was  replaced  by 
a  thin,  gloomy  man  who  stood  glowering  down  at  his 
boots  as  Andrew  presented  his  nephew. 

"Leslie,"  he  said,  "has  very  kindly  consented  to  take 
you  into  his  house.  My  nephew,  Leslie,  has  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  lose  his  luggage  on  his  journey  here.  You 
will  kindly  apply  to  the  cashier  for  seven  pounds  ten  to 
buy  him  the  necessary  clothes  and  boots." 

"Yes,"  said  the  gloomy  man,  "my  wife  will  see  to  it." 

"I  could  do  it  myself,"  interjected  Jamie,  hating  the 
idea  of  being  handed  over  to  a  woman. 

"Mr.  Leslie  will  see  to  it,"  said  Andrew  severely.  "It 
is  time  for  you  to  begin  your  duties,  but  first  could  you 
describe  the  persons  who  robbed  you  of  your  chest?" 

"The  man,"  replied  Jamie  eagerly,  vividly  remember- 
ing, "was  short  and  broad-shouldered,  shabbily  dressed, 
and  he  wore  clogs.  He  had  a  big  red  mark  over  his  right 
eye  and  the  woman  called  him  Mike.  She  was  pleasant- 
looking,  with  bright  eyes  and  full  lips.  She  was  short 
and  had  a  very  big  bosom." 

"That'll  do,"  Andrew  cut  him  short.  "I'm  sure  Mr. 
Leslie  will  be  a  good  friend  to  you." 

Leslie  led  Jamie  down  a  long  passage  and  up  a  few 


36  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

stairs  into  a  bare  room  along  all  sides  of  which  were 
desks  and  tall  stools.  At  the  end  of  this  room  was  a 
little  square  window  and  next  to  it  a  desk,  at  which  sat 
another  boy  who,  as  they  approached,  buried  his  nose  in 
a  great  ledger  lying  open  before  him. 

"Bell,"  said  Leslie,  "this  is  Lawrie.  He  will  take  over 
your  work  from  to-morrow,  when  you  are  to  go  into  Mr. 
Clulow's  room.  Show  him  what  you  have  to  do,  and  in 
the  dinner  hour  you  can  take  him  over  the  warehouse." 

Jamie  and  Bell  eyed  each  other  shyly.  Bell  grinned  as 
Leslie  turned  away.  Jamie  took  his  grin  for  friendliness 
and  warmed  to  him. 

"Is  it  very  difficult  ?" 

"Combing  your  hair's  a  sight  harder." 

"Oh!" 

"You'd  better  begin  copying  letters  and  if  anybody 
comes  to  the  window  you  can  ask  them  what  the  hell  they 
want  and  tell  me." 

So  Jamie  began  by  copying  letters  all  very  much  alike 
about  bales  and  freights  and  deliveries.  These  letters 
only  interested  him  when  they  referred  to  payment  and 
were  offensive.  Then  he  rather  relished  copying  them, 
though  he  was  always  relieved  when  there  came  a  tap 
at  the  window  and  he  was  told  Wyman,  McClure,  or  Tib- 
bett's,  or  Clomen  &  Co.  wished  to  be  attended  to.  Then 
he  referred  to  Bell  and  Bell  referred  to  Mr.  Wilcox, 
and  Mr.  Wilcox  referred  to  Mr.  Leslie,  who  said 
"Damn"  and  went  out  of  the  room.  Though  he  was 
interested  time  went  slowly  and  he  often  fell  to  watch- 
ing Bell,  who  would  stop  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence  with 
his  pen  poised  above  the  paper  and  stare  vacantly  in  front 
of  him  and  suck  his  teeth  or  hum  to  himself,  or  slowly 
scratch  his  head.  Occasionally  Mr.  Wilcox  would  say 
in  a  dreamy,  empty  voice — "Mesopotamia,  Mes-o-pot- 


THE  PETER  LESLIES  37 

am-i-a,"  ringing  the  changes  on  the  syllables  until  Mr. 
Leslie  told  him  to  dry  up. 

In  the  dinner  hour  when  Jamie  asked  why  Mr.  Wilcox 
said  "Mesopotamia,"  Bell  told  him  that  old  Cocks-and- 
hens  was  a  great  reciter  and  often  performed  :— 

"Penny  readings,  Waterloo  and  that.  Makes  ye  fair 
laugh.  I  heard  him  once  tell  Mr.  Leslie  there  was  a  man 
once  could  say  Mesopotamia  so  as  to  make  thousands 
of  people  cry." 

Jamie  tried  it  to  himself  and  found  that  he  could  very 
nearly  bring  tears  to  his  eyes,  and  he  became  interested 
in  Mr.  Wilcox :  so  much  so  that  when  Bell  took  him  round 
the  warehouse  he  said  very  little  and  came  away  with  a 
confused  memory  of  enormous  piles  of  cloth  with  men 
lazily  moving  round  them.  He  was  rather  shocked  by 
the  indolence  and  the  quiet  of  it  all,  for  his  idea  of  the 
big  city  had  been  one  of  fierce  energy.  However  his  in- 
terest in  Mr.  Wilcox  remedied  his  disappointment  and 
when  Bell  took  him  out  into  the  streets  he  shook  off  the 
sleepiness  which  had  begun  to  overcome  him,  yet,  not 
wishing  to  be  taken  for  a  new-comer,  he  strove  as  much 
as  possible  to  conceal  his  interest  and  excitement.  Bell 
showed  him  the  new  Queen's  Theatre,  the  Town  Hall, 
the  Gentleman's  Concert  Hall,  and  the  new  station,  but 
Jamie  merely  glanced  at  them  and  said :  "Ou,  aye,"  or, 
when  he  remembered  that  he  was  in  England,  "Oh!  yes." 

His  clothes  made  him  very  unhappy.  Farquharson  had 
made  his  coat  very  short  in  the  back  and  his  trousers  tight 
about  his  calves.  He  was  glad,  indeed,  that  he  had  lost 
his  chest  and  would  soon  be  in  appearance  as  the  others. 

At  the  coffee-house  where  they  dined  he  was  introduced 
to  a  number  of  young  men  and  youths,  but  he  was  afraid 
of  them  and  kept  his  mouth  shut.  They  all  laughed  a 
great  deal  and  he  understood  none  of  their  jokes. 


38  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

The  afternoon  was  like  the  morning,  except  that  a 
traveller  came  in  with  tales  of  success  and  adventures 
on  the  road  and  an  exciting  account  of  riots  in  London. 
Mr.  Wilcox  said :  "What  we  need  is  a  great  orator. 
These  men  don't  know  how  to  handle  an  audience.  Eng- 
land is  going  to  the  dogs." — "Not,"  replied  the  traveller, 
"while  trade  grows  the  way  it  does." — "Trade!"  sniffed 
Mr.  Wilcox.  "I  know  all  about  that.  What's  the  good 
of  it  if  it  only  leads  to  more  trade?" — His  scorn  seemed 
very  fine  to  Jamie,  who  had  begun  to  be  bored  by  the 
letters  he  was  copying. 

Work  stopped  early  in  the  afternoon  and  conversation 
flowed  freely :  Mr.  Leslie  moving  in  and  out  of  the  room 
with  his  hands  full  of  papers  and  ledgers.  Other  men 
came  in  and  went  out  and  when  at  last  activity  ceased 
Mr.  Wilcox  asked  if  he  might  recite  The  Isles  of  Greece, 
which  he  had  prepared  for  that  evening.  Mr.  Leslie 
grunted  and  Mr.  Wilcox  took  up  his  stand  by  the  fire- 
place, flung  back  his  head  and  declaimed  Byron's  lyric. 
When  he  had  finished  he  said :  "By  Heaven,  that  is  as 
good  as  a  taste  of  liberty,  and  I'm  hanged  if  I  wait  for 
the  clock  to  strike."  With  that  he  clapped  his  hat  on  his 
head,  and  strode  magnificently  from  the  room.  Bell 
laughed  and  said :  "You've  hurt  his  feelings  by  not  ask- 
ing him  to  recite  something  else."  He  laughed  again 
when  Jamie  replied :  "I  wish  I  had." 

It  was  nearly  dark  when  Mr.  Leslie  put  on  his  hat  and 
coat  and  tucked  a  ledger  under  his  arm  and  asked  Jamie 
to  come  with  him.  They  walked  through  the  streets  for 
some  miles  without  a  word.  Mr.  Leslie  went  so  fast  with 
his  loping  steps  that  Jamie  had  to  stride  his  hardest  to 
keep  up  with  him.  At  last  the  thin  man  said  gloomily : 
"Mind  children?" — "I  have  minded  my  sisters,"  replied 
Jamie. — '"I  mean,  you  don't  object  to  them?" — "No." 


THE  PETER  LESLIES  39 

The  question  surprised  Jamie,  to  whom  it  had  never  hap- 
pened to  object  coolly  or  on  principle  to  anything.  "No," 
he  said.  "No." 

They  came  to  a  row  of  little  houses  that  looked  out  over 
fields  from  which  a  mist  was  rising.  "This  is  where  I 
live,"  said  Mr.  Leslie.  "Would  you  rather  I  lent  you  a 
nightgown  or  send  you  out  to-night  with  Mrs.  Leslie  to 
buy  your  things  ?" 

Jamie  said  he  would  rather  borrow  for  that  night  and 
make  his  purchases  the  next  day.  The  long  silent  walk 
had  depressed  him  and  also  he  was  anxious  not  to  cause 
his  host  any  trouble.  He  had  been  feeling  that  he  was 
not  wanted,  for  he  knew  how  in  his  own  family  the  pres- 
ence of  a  stranger  would  have  been  resented.  Besides 
he  was  anxious  to  do  the  buying  of  his  clothes  himself 
so  that  he  might  be  certain  of  getting  what  he  wanted. 

Mr.  Leslie  entered  the  house  first,  to  find  his  wife 
waiting  for  them  lamp  in  hand.  She  put  up  her  face  and 
her  solemn  husband  stooped  and  kissed  her  and  said,  as 
he  took  his  coat  off : 

"Well,  here  is  Mr.  Lawrie." 

"But  you  said  he  was  to  be  a  lad.  Why,  he  is  nearly 
as  tall  as  you  are.  He-he !" 

And  Jamie  realised  that  he  was  quite  as  tall  as  Mr. 
Leslie  and  he  fetched  up  as  deep  a  voice  as  he  could  in 
himself  to  say : 

"Good-evening,  Mrs.  Leslie,  it  is  very  good  of  you 
to  have  me." 

"He-he!"  she  giggled.  "We  are  only  too  pleased  to 
oblige  Mr.  Keith." 

Mr.  Leslie  had  already  proceeded  to  the  back  of  the 
house  and  thither  they  followed,  Mrs.  Leslie  giggling  and 
Jamie  saying  to  himself  that  if  she  didn't  stop  he  would 
hit  her  in  the  back  of  the  neck.  She  was  a  very  little 


40  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

woman,  with  high  shoulders  and  a  short  waist,  so  that 
her  crinoline  seemed  immense,  rather  like  a  huge  cushion 
in  which  she  was  immersed.  However  after  his  day  spent 
among  men  Jamie  was  grateful  to  her  for  being  a  woman 
and  was  not  disposed  to  be  critical.  Homesickness  with 
him  had  taken  the  form  of  a  longing  for  his  sister  Mary. 

The  room  in  which  he  found  himself  was  full  of  little 
Leslies  all  crowded  round  their  father  to  watch  him  re- 
move his  boots.  There  were  two  boys  and  three  girls, 
who  at  once  became  very  shy  and  stole  glances  at  each 
other  as  the  lodger  was  presented  to  them.  He  shook 
hands  with  them  all;  cold,  bony  hands  they  had;  and  at 
once  they  became  busy,  preparing  the  supper.  The  eld- 
est girl  disappeared  with  her  father's  boots  and  returned 
in  a  moment  with  a  toasting-fork  and  two  rounds  of 
bread  which  Mr.  Leslie  proceeded  to  toast.  As  he  toasted 
he  looked  round  the  room.  Presently  he  gave  a  cry  of 
fury,  threw  down  his  toasting-fork  and  disappeared  under 
the  table.  In  a  moment  or  two  he  emerged  with  a  few 
crumbs  in  the  palm  of  his  hand. 

"Who,"  he  asked,  "who  is  supposed  to  have  brushed 
the  carpet?" 

"Se-Selina,"  said  Mrs.  Leslie  in  a  quavering  voice. 

"I  have  at  least  the  right,"  cried  Mr.  Leslie  in  an  in- 
jured tone,  "I  have  at  least  the  right  to  expect  that,  while 
I  am  at  work,  slaving  to  keep  life  in  your  bodies,  my  house 
will  be  kept  decent." 

"Oh!  Peter,"  cried  his  wife.  "Before  Mr.  Lawrie  too. 
Whatever  will  he  think  of  us  ?" 

"Selina,"  said  Peter,  "go  to  bed!" 

Selina  put  out  her  tongue  at  her  eldest  brother  and 
went  out  of  the  room. 

Then  Mr.  Leslie  picked  up  his  toasting-fork. 

"Ruined  a  piece  of  bread  too." 


THE  PETER  LESLIES  41 

"We  didn't  do  that,  papa,"  protested  the  eldest  boy. 

"Oh,  George,"  giggled  his  mother,  "don't  torment  your 
father.  What  must  you  think  of  us,  Mr.  Lawrie?" 

"I  don't  think  anything,"  replied  Jamie  nervously, 
wondering  if  Selina,  who  was  a  rather  pretty  child,  was 
really  to  go  supperless. 

The  eldest  boy  looked  mischievous  and  said :  "Does 
your  father ?" 

"Mr.  Lawrie's  father,"  said  Peter  solemnly,  "Mr.  Law- 
rie's  father  is  dead." 

That  produced  an  oppressive  silence  which  lasted 
through  the  meal  and  until  the  children  had  kissed  their 
father  and  mother  good-night.  Jamie  kissed  the  girls 
and  shook  hands  with  the  boys,  who  grinned  at  him,  and 
on  his  host's  invitation  drew  up  to  the  fire. 

"He-he!  Mr.  Lawrie,"  said  Mrs.  Leslie.  "What  do 
you  think  of  Thrigsby?" 

"He's  seen  nothing  of  it  yet,"  said  her  husband. 

"He-he!     Mr.  Lawrie,  I  hope  you  like  the  office." 

"How  can  he  tell  yet  whether  he  likes  it  or  not  ?" 

"He-he !  Mr.  Lawrie,  I  should  have  known  you  were 
your  uncle's  nephew  anywhere." 

"I  don't  see  the  least  likeness." 

"He-he !    Mr.  Lawrie,  you  mustn't  mind  my  husband." 

"Why  should  he  mind  me,  except  at  the  office  when  he 
must  do  as  I  tell  him?" 

So  the  conversation  went  on  until  it  was  time  for  bed 
and  then  Mr.  Leslie  sent  his  wife  upstairs,  raked  out  the 
fire,  shut  the  doors,  lighted  Jamie  up  to  his  room,  brought 
him  a  nightgown  and  said  he  hoped  he  would  sleep  well 
and  be  up  in  time  for  breakfast  at  eight.  Jamie  said  he 
would,  but  was  half  resolved  to  get  up  and  go  out  into  the 
night  and  sleep  in  the  streets,  anywhere  where  he  could 
feel  free  of  his  memory  of  the  supperless  Selina,  the  gig- 


42  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

vgling  Mrs.  Leslie  and  the  cutting,  precise  tones  of  her 
husband. — "I  will  go,"  he  thought,  "and  awaken  my 
uncle.  I  will  bring  him  to  the  window  and  speak  to  him 
from  the  garden  out  of  the  darkness  and  tell  him  that  as 
his  nephew  I  am  entitled  to  more  consideration  than  he 
has  shown  me.  I  will  tell  him  that  if  I  am  to  lodge  in  the 
house  of  one  of  his  clerks  I  would  prefer  it  to  be  with  Mr. 
Wilcox."  The  thought  of  his  uncle,  however,  subdued 
his  rebellion.  He  was  already  afraid  of  Andrew,  and  be- 
cause of  his  fear  he  decided  that  he  hated  Peter  Leslie, 
and  would  never  stay  but  would  go  in  search  of  his  chest, 
disappear,  make  his  fortune,  return,  provide  Mary  with 
a  library  and  his  mother  with  a  coach  and  six. — Was  this 
the  fortune  he  had  come  to  seek,  all  the  way  from  Scot- 
land ?  He  was  canny  enough  and  did  not  expect  success 
immediately  to  crown  his  efforts,  but  he  did  and  he  had 
the  right  to  look  for  more  inspiring  company  than  a  man 
who  crawled  after  crumbs  under  the  table,  though  to  be 
sure  illustrious  men  had  picked  up  their  first  sixpence  in 
the  streets.  Oh!  but  Andrew  Keith  had  done  no  such 
thing,  and  Andrew  Keith  should  have  known  better  than 
to  condemn  his  nephew  to  lodge  with  the  Peter  Les- 
lies. "And,"  added  Jamie  in  his  excited  thoughts,  "and 
that  nephew  a  Lawrie." — He  got  impatient  with  these 
thoughts  of  his  but  his  bed  was  hard  and  knobbly  and 
would  not  let  him  rest. — "I'd  make  him  eat  his  crumbs," 
he  cried.  "And  I'm  danged  if  I  sit  copying  letters  4n  the 
room  with  him.  Ay,  I'll  talk  with  Mr.  Wilcox,  and  Bell 
can  answer  the  folks  at  the  window.  Ech !  I'm  an  in- 
grate,  and  my  thoughts  are  wicked." — They  were  begin- 
ning to  be  haunted  with  visions  of  maidens,  so  out  he  got 
and  dropped  down  on  his  knees  and  prayed  a  good,  long 
Scots  prayer  of  self-denunciation  at  the  end  of  which  he 
slipped  in  a  plea  for  Mrs.  Leslie — "O  Lord,  put  it  into 


THE  PETER  LESLIES  43 

her  heart  not  to  giggle  when  she  speaks  to  me" — and  a 
blessing  upon  his  mother.  That  done,  he  got  into  bed 
again  and  went  to  sleep  almost  in  tears  at  the  emotion 
he  had  contrived  to  put  into  the  word  Mesopotamia. 

Selina  woke  him  up  in  the  morning.  "Hullo!"  he 
said.  "Hungry?" 

"Oh  no!    Why?" 

"Didn't  you  have  no  supper?" 

"Of  course  not,"  she  said.  "I  had  my  supper  in  the 
kitchen.  I  always  do,  you  know.  Papa  is  in  a  very  good 
temper  this  morning.  He  is  talking  in  his  whistling  voice 
to  the  cat." 

Echoing  through  the  house  Jamie  heard  a  shrill  fal- 
setto screaming:  "Oh!  she  was  the  filthy  foumart,  the 
foul  and  filthy,  and  the  foetid." 

However,  when  he  came  downstairs,  there  was  no  sign 
of  humour  upon  Mr.  Leslie's  countenance.  Breakfast 
was  hurried  through  and  Mrs.  Leslie  said  she  would  meet 
Jamie  in  the  dinner  hour  to  buy  his  clothes.  He  tried  to 
protest  that  he  was  quite  capable  of  getting  them  for  him- 
self but  Mr.  Leslie  was  firm  and  said  that  he  must  obey 
orders,  and  that  Jamie  must  learn  to  obey  them  too. — 
"Whose  orders?"  asked  Jamie. — "Your  uncle's,  Mr.  Law- 
rie,"  replied  Mrs.  Leslie. — "Oh!  my  prophetic  soul!" 
cried  Jamie.  "I  would  have  saved  a  bit  of  the  seven 
pound  ten." — "That,"  interjected  Mr.  Leslie,  "is  still 
possible.  Your  wages  are  to  be  paid  to  me  and  I  am  to 
allow  you  eight  shillings  a  week,  until  the  seven  pounds 
ten  are  paid  off,  when  I  am  to  raise  the  sum  to  ten  shil- 
lings a  week." — Jamie  went  as  red  as  a  turkey  and  gob- 
bled like  one  in  his  rage  and  shame. — He  felt  that  his 
uncle  was  mischievous  and  malevolent  and  all-powerful 
and  his  high  spirit  could  not  bow  to  his  bidding.  Resent- 
ment had  been  obscure  in  him  until  tyranny  touched  his 


44  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

pocket— "I'll  go  in  rags!"  he  said.— "Oh!  Mr.  Lawrie!" 
giggled  Mrs.  Leslie.  "You  can't  do  that.  What  would 
your  mamma  think  if  we  let  you  go  about  in  rags?  for  I 
regard  myself  as  more  responsible  to  your  mamma  than 
to  your  uncle,  Mr.  Lawrie." 

Have  his  mother,  have  Tom  know  that  he  had  lost  his 
chest  ?  Never !  Jamie  capitulated. 

The  morning  had  produced  three  more  little  Leslies, 
two  girls  and  a  baby  boy  who  was  tied  to  the  leg  of  the 
dining-table  and  allowed  to  sprawl  as  he  pleased  over  the 
floor. 

"You  see,"  said  Mrs.  Leslie,  "I  can't  help  feeling  for 
you  as  a  mother  and  thinking  how  my  own  boys  will  be 
when  they  leave  me." 

"My  mother,"  said  Jamie,  "brought  us  up  on  ninety 
pounds  a  year,  and  is  proud  of  it." 

"You  must  be  very  fond  of  her,  Mr.  Lawrie.  I  shall 
write  to  her " 

"What  on  earth  can  you  say  to  her?"  grumbled  her 
husband. 

"Oh !  just  a  little  friendly  something." 

Jamie  liked  her  for  that.  She  had  found  the  phrase  to 
describe  herself,  and  it  fortified  him  in  his  dislike  of  her 
unbending  husband. — "I  think  I  shall  be  very  happy 
here,"  he  said.  "Until  I  find  my  way  about. — And  I 
am  sure  my  mother  will  be  glad  to  hear  from  you." 

Mr.  Leslie  drew  his  purse  from  his  pocket,  placed  some 
silver  coins  on  the  mantelpiece,  and  announced  that  it  was 
time  to  go.  He  gave  orders  that  the  parlour  was  to  be 
swept  and  dusted  by  Friday  night  when  Mr.  Wilcox  and 
perhaps  one  or  two  others  would  be  coming  in  for  a 
friendly  evening. — "Will  they  require  refreshments?" 
asked  Mrs.  Leslie. — '"Of  course  there  will  be  refresh- 
ments. Cakes  and  gingerbread  and  I  will  buy  a  bottle 


THE  PETER  LESLIES  45 

of  sherry  wine.  You  didn't  think  I  would  invite  my 
friends  here  to  starve."  Mr.  Leslie  had  a  most  exas- 
perating trick  of  emphasis.  He  seemed  to  be  always  vi- 
brant with  irritation.  In  his  most  empty  remarks,  even 
his  most  insignificant  gesture,  he  was  Leslie  contra  mun- 
dum,  and  he  inspired  Jamie,  as  he  did  his  children  and 
the  clerks  at  the  office,  with  awe. 

There  was  absolutely  no  deception  about  the  Leslie 
household.  It  existed  by,  with  or  from  Peter,  the  most 
uxorious  of  men,  and  therefore,  in  his  own  eyes,  the  best 
of  husbands  and  fathers.  He  had  no  other  conviction. 
In  order  to  be  the  best  of  husbands  and  fathers  he  did 
his  duty  by  his  employer  and  fulfilled  his  duty  to  God  as 
a  churchwarden  at  the  newly  built  church  of  S.  James 
the  Less  in  Kennedy  Street.  (Half  the  streets  in  that 
district  of  Thrigsby  bore  Scots  names.)  No  denying 
Peter's  authority  in  his  own  home.  If  his  children  asked 
Why,  he  replied :  "Because  I  say  so" ;  and  if  they  made 
the  least  show  of  protest  he  would  say:  "Don't  argue 
with  me !" 

He  took  charge  of  Jamie's  religious  education  and  per- 
suaded him  to  sing  in  the  choir.  This  meant  that  two  at 
least  of  the  young  man's  evenings  in  the  week  were  safely 
accounted  for. 


CHAPTER    V 

SUFFERING 


T  F  there  was  no  subtlety  about  Peter  Leslie,  so  that  you 
-*-  had  the  whole  man  in  his  conceit,  there  were  continual 
astonishments  in  his  wife.  Her  thoughts  were  like  flies 
on  a  wall,  bewildering  to  herself  and  to  those  with  whom 
she  conversed  until  they  learned  to  ignore  her  prattle,  and 
to  accept  the  friendly  happiness  that  bubbled  out  of  her. 
Jamie  learned  to  do  this  almost  insensibly  from  her  chil- 
dren, who  never  paid  any  attention  to  anything  she  said 
and  treated  her  always  with  affectionate  indulgence.  She 
had  stories  of  fables  and  old  songs  which  were  an  even 
greater  delight  to  her  than  they  were  to  her  family.  In- 
deed it  always  seemed  an  effort  to  her  to  remember  that 
she  was  older  than  her  children  and  she  would  make  that 
effort  only  when  her  husband  was  in  the  house.  Jamie 
used  to  marvel  at  her  indifference  to  Selina's  or  Layton's 
misdeeds.  She  would  never  be  angry,  but  would  say,  as 
if  to  remind  herself:  "You  know  your  father  will  be 
quite  upset!"  and  then  she  would  take  steps  to  repair  or 
conceal  the  damage,  even  sometimes  going  as  far  as  to 
pawn  her  clothes  or  her  jewels  to  obtain  money.  But 
against  Peter  she  would  never  defend  Selina  or  Layton, 
though  she  would  argue  for  the  little  ones  who  could  not 
present  a  case  against  injustice. 

She  admitted  Jamie  to  her  family  and  treated  him  as 
a  child,  that  is  to  say,  as  her  equal.    He  responded  and 

46 


SUFFERING  47 


was  devoted  to  her,  though  his  happiness  with  her  aggra- 
vated his  sensibility  and  made  the  adult  affairs  in  which 
he  had  to  take  part  outside  her  house  repellent  to  him. 
Peter  became  a  bugbear  for  he  was  so  obsequious  in  the 
office,  so  self-assertive  (not  to  say  self- worshipful)  at 
home.  And  Jamie  suffered,  continually  and  obscurely, 
suffered  so  acutely  at  moments  that  he  was  astonished 
at  his  own  general  cheerfulness.  How  to  make  a  career 
in  a  world  that  took  absolutely  no  notice  of  him,  snarled 
at  him  when  he  did  ill  and  ignored  what  he  did  well, 
and  was  not  in  the  least  interested  to  find  out  what  he 
could  or  could  not  do?  The  indifference  of  the  world 
outside  Mrs.  Leslie  aggravated  his  tendency  to  feel  that 
he  was  at  least  as  great  as  Napoleon,  and  when  he 
bungled  a  job  at  the  office  he  would  tell  himself  that  it 
was  because  the  work  was  beneath  his  powers. 
Heavens!  How  slowly  the  days  would  go,  how  the 
weeks  would  drag,  how  the  life  at  home  slipped  away 
from  him,  leaving  him  flaccid,  cut  off  from  his  original 
source  of  energy!  The  letters  that  came  from  home 
were  a  mockery:  his  brothers  regarded  him  with  envy, 
his  mother  with  pride  and  hope.  He  was  out  in  the 

world  making  a  career!     Making  a ?     Making  a 

fool  of  himself,  falling  in  love  with  Mrs.  Leslie  and 
Selina  (aged  13)  in  turn.  And  that  was  a  new  source 
of  misery.  Selina  would  tease  him  and  Mrs.  Leslie  was 
entirely  impervious  to  his  passion  and  would  kiss  and 
fondle  him  innocently  and  maternally,  until  he  would  be 
sick  with  hatred  of  Peter  as  the  insuperable  bar  to  the 
satisfaction  of  his  desires.  He  gave  up  singing  in  the 
choir  on  that  account.  His  conscience  would  not  allow 
him  to  sing  the  Magnificat  or  the  Nunc  dimittis  while 
his  heart  was  full  of  loathing  of  Peter  Leslie  sitting  there 
so  smug  in  the  churchwarden's  pew  with  his  wife  and 


48  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

five  children  behind  him.  Jamie  gave  up  singing  in  the 
choir  and  when  Peter  inquired  into  the  matter  said  that 
the  church  was  too  High  for  him  and  took  himself  off 
to  a  Low  one,  where  he  became  enamoured  of  a  maiden, 
the  daughter  of  a  saddler,  forgot  both  Mrs.  Leslie  and 
Selina  and  was  for  a  few  months  extremely  and 
lugubriously  pious. 

His  intentions  were  honourable.  He  was  invited  to 
tea  by  the  saddler  in  the  best  parlour  above  the  shop, 
and,  being  entirely  at  a  loss  for  conversation,  avowed 
himself  and  was  accepted  as  a  suitor.  He  was  horrified 
but  unable  to  extricate  himself.  The  duties  were  ardu- 
ous, the  maiden  exacting  and  devout.  On  Sundays  the 
unhappy  youth  was  kept  praying  and  singing  from  early 
morn  to  late  night.  When  he  was  left  alone  with  the 
object  of  his  affections  for  an  hour  in  the  afternoon 
she  made  him  read  aloud  from  the  sermons  of  the  late 
Vicar  of  Thrigsby. 

It  was  a  great  relief  to  him  when  his  uncle  was  in- 
formed of  the  affair  and  crushed  it  with  a  word.  The 
saddler  was  given  to  understand  that  young  Lawrie  was 
not  and  had  no  chance  of  being  his  uncle's  heir  and 
when  Jamie  next  visited  the  parlour  above  the  shop  it 
was  to  find  a  spotty-faced  rival  nursing  the  volume  of 
sermons.  Now  rivalry  was  odious  to  his  temper.  He 
hated  a  contest  and  avoided  this  as  he  had  avoided  all 
others  in  his  life.  Having  no  wish  to  beat  or  be  beaten, 
he  renounced  his  affections  and  aspirations,  and  at- 
tended yet  another  church,  emphatically  Broad,  vowing 
that  he  would  not  again  have  his  religion  disturbed  by 
his  affections,  which  he  had  begun  to  distrust.  They 
had  so  often  led  him  into  terrible  thoughts,  an  alarm- 
ing perception,  for  instance1,  of  the  shape  of  Mrs  Leslie 
beneath  her  crinoline.  Another  appalling  discrepancy! 


SUFFERING  49 


Why  should  a  woman's  form  be  so  unlike  that  of  her 
clothes?  And  why — for  questions  breed  like  maggots 
in  the  brain — why  should  the  emotions  roused  by  woman 
in  her  clothes  he  so  shocked  and  confused  by  the  idea 
of  their  removal? — 'Such  thoughts,  such  questions  as 
these  had  writhed  even  through  the  Vicar's  sermons. — 
Even  religion,  therefore,  was  an  inadequate  protection. 
However,  such  as  it  was,  Jamie  clung  to  it.  He  wanted 
to  show  himself  worthy  as  the  son  of  his  mother  and 
the  nephew  of  his  uncle,  to  prosper  in  his  career,  to 
have  his  little  corner  of  the  world  at  his  feet.  But  how 
to  do  it  ?  Ah !  there  was  the  rub.  He  insisted  on  know- 
ing how  it  was  to  be  done,  and  could  not  accept  it  as  a 
thing  that  would  happen,  just  as  at  a  very  early  age  he 
had  rummaged  among  Doctor  M'Phail's  books  to  satisfy 
himself  as  to  the  manner  of  his  birth  and  thereafter  had 
taken  the  keenest  interest  in  the  serving  of  a  sow  on  his 
uncle's  farm  and  had  contrived  to  be  present  at  her  de- 
livery of  twelve  little  pigs. — Hearsay  was  no  good  to 
him  and  yet  he  clung  to  religion  because  he  was  almost 
as  much  afraid  of  his  thoughts  as  he  was  of  his  affec- 
tions.— Poor  wretch!  And  this  is  to  be  his  story,  the 
tale  of  his  joy  and  suffering  who  could  never  accept 
either  except  upon  his  own  terms,  and  yet,  through  life, 
never  lost  his  faith  in  his  fellow-men,  nor  abandoned 
hope  of  satisfaction  in  living  among  them! 

Uncle  Andrew  commanded  his  presence  at  dinner  one 
Sunday. 

"Well,  well,  and  how  are  we  getting  on?  And  how 
do  we  like  our  work  ?" 

"I  don't  find  it  very  difficult,  thank  you,  Uncle." 

"Ah!  we  don't  find  it  difficult.  No,  no.  Only  the 
brain,  the  controlling  brain,  is  sensible  of  the  difficulty 
of  making  a  profit. — You  never  thought  of  that?  Hah !" 


50  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"Yes.  I  did  think  of  that."  This  was  not  true  but 
Jamie's  mind  rushed  at  the  idea,  and,  as  usual,  pushed 
beyond  it,  and  made  him  say: 

"Yes.  I  suppose  that  is  why  the  brain  takes  the 
profit." 

"Eh!"  Andrew  regarded  his  nephew  with  dislike 
and  uneasiness,  half  suspecting  him  of  impertinence  be- 
hind the  innocence  of  his  boyish  face.  "Eh?  Eh,  hem! 
The  labourer  is  worthy  of  his  hire." 

But  Jamie  was  no  longer  interested.  He  had  failed 
to  grasp  the  idea  which  had  heated  his  brain.  He  was 
much  more  interested  in  wondering  how  long  he  would 
be  expected  to  stay  after  dinner. 

"I  have  good  accounts  of  you  in  the  office  and  I  am 
please^  to  hear  that  you  are  regular  in  attending  church. 
I  like  regularity.  Keep  your  Sundays  regular  and  it 
steadies  you  from  Monday  to  Saturday.  Nothing  bet- 
ter for  a  young  man.  But — m-m-m — saddler's  daughter 
— marriage — No !" 

"No!"  repeated  Jamie  emphatically.     "No!" 

"What  the  devil  do  you  mean?  I  hadn't  said  what  I 
was  going  to  say." 

"No.  I  mean,  if  you  knew  Mrs.  Leslie  and  how  hard 
put  to  it  she  is  to  make  both  ends  meet,  you'd  think 
twice  about  marrying." 

"Silence,  sir!  I  did  not  put  you  to  lodge  with  Leslie 
that  you  might  spy  upon  their  affairs." 

"Good  Lord,"  thought  Jamie.    "I've  done  it  now." 

Then  suddenly  Andrew  became  kind  in  his  tone  and 
said:  "You  must  learn  to  keep  your  tongue  in  your 
head — you've  an  old  head  for  your  years — or  I  don't 
know  what  will  become  of  you." 

Then  Jamie  felt  very  sorry  for  himself  and  answered 
meekly : 


SUFFERING 


"Yes,  Uncle." 

"You'll  be  sent  to  the  mill  soon  and  after  that  a  taste 
of  the  travelling  will  do  you  no  harm.  Do  you  know 
French?" 

"A  little." 

"Better  rub  up  your  French.  We  may  be  wanting 
presentable  young  men  to  go  to  France.  If  you  like  I'll 
pay  for  you  to  have  French  lessons.  That  will  help  to 
keep  you  out  of  mischief  in  the  evenings," 

"Thank  you,  Uncle.— (fF*//  he  pay?)" 

That  ended  the  meal,  but  not  the  discomfort  of  uncle 
and  nephew.  Jamie,  gazing  at  the  big  white  face,  was 
awed  by  it  and  expected  some  wisdom,  some  oracular 
guidance  to  come  out  of  it.  No  such  thing  happened, 
however,  and  he  had  to  reconcile  himself  to  being  sent 
empty  away.  Mischief  in  the  evenings!  What  mis- 
chief? He  felt  insulted.  He  was  getting  tired  of  the 
assumption  that  he  was  a  danger  to  himself,  which  he 
was  beginning  to  find  on  all  sides — in  Peter  Leslie,  in 
Mrs.  Leslie,  in  his  mother's  letters  and  now  in  his  uncle, 
the  master  of  his  destiny.  At  least  they  might  let  him 
know  in  what  the  danger  consisted,  instead  of  hinting  at 
it.  They  had  all  recommended  religion  as  a  safeguard 
and  he  had  no  objection  to  religion.  It  had  its  merits 
though  in  the  English  Church  they  were  rather  watered 
down;  there  were  no  good  hair-raising  prayers  from  the 
pulpit,  neither  were  sermons  so  withering  and  scornful; 
on  the  other  hand  there  was  something  good-tempered 
and  satisfactory  about  English  hymns,  though  the 
rhymes  in  them  were  rather  far-fetched.  Also  going  to 
church  provided  something  to  do  and  people  to  see  on 
Sunday,  and,  besides,  it  made  him  feel  sly  and  mischiev- 
ous as  though  he  were  lying  in  wait  to  cry  Peep-bo  to 
that  from  which  he  was  hiding. — What  was  it?  Ah! 


52  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

that  danger,  that  mischief ! — He  felt  very  sure  his  uncle 
knew  what  it  was.  Almost  he  was  convinced  that  it  was 
in  his  uncle's  power  to  chain  it  up  or  to  loose  it  upon  him. 
And  all  that  came  out  of  his  uncle  was  a  recommenda- 
tion to  learn  French,  which  was  absurd. 

It  was  maddening  that  all  his  visits  to  his  uncle 
should  end  thus  fantastically.  Old  Andrew  was  the 
only  human  being  in  Thrigsby  to  whom  he  owed  any 
natural  affection,  and  his  mother  was  constantly  assur- 
ing him  that  he  owed  a  great  deal.  But  no  sooner  did  he 
enter  the  door  of  the  house  than  his  natural  affection 
was  laid  down  with  his  hat  and  overcoat  and  he  knew 
that  he  would  spend  the  time  gazing  fascinated  at  the 
white  face  like  a  rabbit  at  a  snake.  The  white  face 
haunted  him.  It  swung  in  the  spaces  of  his  universe  like 
a  moon.  His  fear  of  it  oozed  over  into  the  emotions 
reserved  for  his  religion  and  became  one  with  it.  But 
as  yet  he  had  no  other  thought.  The  moon-face  was 
the  only  light  upon  his  life  and  by  it  he  walked,  warily 
because  of  the  shadows,  but,  as  yet,  light-heartedly 
enough. 

"Oh !  yes,  Uncle,  I  would  be  gey  and  pleased  to  go  to 
France.  It  is  a  great,  rich  country." 

"I  was  never  there  but  once,  but  I  am  told  it  will  be 
a  good  market." 

Market!  Jamie  swallowed  that  word  though  it  was 
like  a  prickly  burr  upon  the  romantic  notions  that  had 
began  to  stir  in  his  head.  Old  Andrew  squashed  them 
further  by  saying: 

"Now  that  you  have  taken  your  place  in  the  office,  I 
think  it  would  be  well  if  you  made  the  acquaintance  of 
your  cousins  the  Greigs.  They  will  be  a  very  powerful 
family  and  useful  to  your  in  your  career." 

"Yes,  Uncle." 


SUFFERING  53 


When  Andrew  talked  like  that  Jamie  simply  did  not 
understand  him.  In  his  idea,  his  career  was  to  grow 
naturally  out  of  his  extraordinary  or  ordinary  merits. 
(For  he  had  begun  to  see  that  they  remained  to  be 
proved.)  Careers  were  begotten  not  made,  and  so  far 
he  had  no  occasion  to  doubt  that  his  would  be  conceived, 
shaped  and  born  complete  in  all  its  parts.  The  possi- 
bility of  its  being  mis-shapen  was  not  worth  a  thought 
and  never  got  one.  It  was  to  grow  like  a  leaf  out  of 
Andrew's  perfection,  though  not  so  did  Jamie  think  of 
it,  but  rather  of  Andrew  producing  it,  pressing  it  into 
his  hand  with  his  extended  two  fingers  as  he  did  once 
with  Tommy  years  ago  when  he  tipped  him.  And  herein 
lay  one  source  of  our  hero's  discomfort.  Time  after 
time  did  he  go  to  his  uncle's  house  and  not  even  a  por- 
tion of  the  career  was  forthcoming:  talk  of  being  moved 
to  the  mills,  of  travelling,  and  now  of  being  sent  to 
France,  and  then  these  awful  suggestions  that  he  had 
better  make  himself  pleasant  to  people  who  would  later 
on  be  useful  to  him :  never  any  hint  from  the  white  face 
of  acknowledging  that  his  nephew  qua  nephew  was  re- 
markable. That  was  implied,  though  Jamie  never  saw 
it,  in  the  mere  fact  of  his  presence  at  the  table.  The 
implication  forced  him  to  sink  his  individuality,  to  be 
nephew  but  not  James;  and  so  he  suffered,  he  suffered 
absurdly  in  all  his  dealings :  he  suffered  from  contact 
with  his  uncle,  from  the  dutiful  correspondence  he  kept 
up  with  his  mother,  before  his  God,  and  in  the  presence 
of  every  women  he  ever  encountered,  regardless  of  age. 
The  ridiculous  adventure  with  the  saddler's  daughter 
was  the  only  relief  he  ever  had.  Reading  the  Vicar's 
sermons  to  her  he  could  pour  floods  of  emotion  into  the 
sluggish  periods,  and  though  the  maiden  never  suspected 
them,  they  were  as  great  a  relief  to  him  as  the  word 


54  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Mesopotamia  was  to  Mr.  Wilcox.  But  there  again  he 
suffered  because  he  was  left  ashamed  of  himself.  Shame 
aggravated  his  excitement  and  he  was  every  moment 
conscious  of  himself,  hot  and  molten  and  overrunning 
a  world  which  was  far  too  small  to  hold  him.  Even 
God  was  rather  diminished  since  it  was  some  reflection 
upon  His  powers  that  he  had  failed  to  design  a  world 
large  enough  for  a  man. 

In  vain  did  he  practise  that  self-abasement  for  which, 
as  a  Scotsman,  he  had  a  native  talent  and  an  enormous 
appetite.  It  turned  his  suffering  into  torment  and  gave 
him  the  horrid  pleasure  of  martyrdom.  Not  daring 
yet  to  tell  himself  that  he  was  suffering  for  the  sins 
of  the  world,  he  was  soon  persuaded  that  he  was  bear- 
ing so  much  for  his  mother  and  his  brothers.  In  this 
he  was  aided  by  his  mother,  from  whom  he  had  been 
unable  to  conceal  his  distress.  She  took  it  for  a  sign 
that  he  was  coming  to  heel  and  was  being  licked  by  the 
world  into  appreciation  of  his  duty  towards  herself. 
At  great  length  she  told  him  how  the  pain  of  parting 
with  him  was  being  healed  by  the  knowledge  of  his  in- 
dustry, the  nobility  with  which  he  bore  his  solitude,  and 
his  kindness  and  consideration  to  his  hostess. — For  Mrs. 
Leslie  sent  in  a  monthly  report. — He  took  all  this  appro- 
bation with  a  proper  modesty,  but,  fundamentally,  with 
indifference.  It  did  not  allay  his  suffering:  that  en- 
dured until  he  had  a  letter  from  his  mother  when  he 
had  been  nearly  ten  months  from  home.  As  usual  Mar- 
garet exhorted  him  to  go  in  fear  of  the  Lord,  and  of 
his  Uncle  Andrew,  and  respectful  humility  before  her- 
self and  his  dead  father,  and  wound  up  with  the  tale 
of  a  domestic  tragedy.  His  sister  Margaret  had  washed 
her  head  one  Saturday  night  and  as  she  dried  her  hair 
before  the  fire,  a  spark  had  flown  out ;  her  hair,  her 


SUFFERING  55 


beautiful  soft  hair  had  all  been  burned  away,  down  to 
the  scalp.  The  poor  child  was  extremely  ill.  Her  hair 
would  never  grow  again  and  she  would  have  to  wear  a 
wig,  but,  of  course,  could  not  possibly  wear  a  wig  until 
she  was  of  an  age  to  put  her  hair  up  in  a  net.  Till 
then  she  would  have  to  conceal  her  misfortune  with  a 
mutch. 

This  story  was  to  Jamie  enormously  funny.  He 
could  see  Margaret  in  a  wig  or  in  an  old  woman's  mutch 
and  he  laughed  over  the  thought  of  it.  He  would  have 
welcomed  a  calamity  in  his  own  life,  but,  as  none  was 
forthcoming,  he  was  glad  of  this  of  his  sister's  and  it 
was  as  absurd  to  him  as  any  of  his  own  would  have 
been.  In  some  mysterious  way  he  thought  of  it  as  a  slap 
for  old  Moon-face. — "How's  that  for  a  proof  that  there's 
a  stir  in  the  world?  A  wee  lassie  wi'  a  wig!  Have  ye 
ever  thought  o'  anything  finer  than  that  in  your  office 
or  your  big  house?  But  that's  the  droll  thing  has  hap- 
pened in  a  wee  house  in  Scotland." — Then  began  in 
Jamie  the  first  stirrings  of  defiance.  He  was  so  alarmed 
by  them  that  he  went  to  every  possible  service  on  the 
next  Sunday:  in  the  evening  with  the  Leslies,  and,  sit- 
ting behind  Selina,  so  that  he  could  not  but  see  her  plump 
little  legs  as  she  knelt,  he  vowed  that  he  loved  her  and 
her  alone  and  would  wed  her  so  soon  as  she  was  a 
woman,  before  she  had  encountered  the  cruel,  the  vile 
world,  and  devote  his  life  to  the  protection  of  her  inno- 
cence. This  idea  crept  into  him  as  his  suffering  left  him 
and  he  was  shocked  by  the  violence  with  which  it  gripped 
him.  It  was  an  ideal!  She  should  never  suffer,  she 
should  never  wear  a  wig,  she  should  be  white  and  stain- 
less while  the  bestiality  of  the  world  daubed  its  slime 
upon  his  heroic  soul.  He  was  filled  with  courage  and 
exaltation  marred  only  by  a  doubt  as  to  whether  he 


56  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

ought  not  there  and  then  to  inform  Mrs.  Leslie  of  his 
intentions.  Courage  failed  him,  but  that  night,  when 
Selina  came  to  curtsey  to  him,  as  her  mother  insisted 
she  should,  he  astonished  her,  himself  and  the  assembled 
family  by  imprinting  a  chaste  and  paternal  kiss  upon 
her  brow. — Ah!  but  he  suffered  no  more,  and  thought 
he  would  never  suffer  again,  for  the  world  had  grown 
large  once  more,  an  enormous  shrine  for  his  ideal  which 
took  shape  dimly  as  a  statue  of  the  Virgin  Mary  bear- 
ing a  very  remote  resemblance  to  Selina.  He  called  it 
Selina  and  was  content — even  to  go  on  waiting  in  the 
room  at  the  office  with  Peter  Leslie  and  Mr.  Wilcox 
until  the  word  came  for  him  to  go  to  the  mills  or  on 
the  road. 


CHAPTER  VI 

WORDS 


MAGGIE'S  tragic  loss  of  her  hair  had  the  important 
consequence  of  driving  Mary  out  into  the  world 
before  her  time.  It  was  the  common  resolve  of  the 
family  that  Maggie  should  have  the  best  wig  that  money 
could  buy  in  a  couple  of  years  when  she  should  be  old 
enough  to  wear  it.  Mary  wrote  to  Jamie  to  tell  him 
he  must  subscribe  while  she  herself  would  begin  to  earn 
money  at  once.  Come  what  might  Maggie  should  not 
go  out  bald  into  the  world.  The  threat  of  this  catas- 
trophe roused  Jamie  as  his  own  discontent  had  never 
done.  He  asked  to  be  removed  from  the  office  and  was 
placed  in  the  warehouse,  given  the  work  of  a  clerk  who 
was  dying  of  a  consumption,  and  half  that  clerk's  salary, 
his  board  and  lodging  with  the  Leslies  being  paid  by 
his  uncle. — <He  needed  very  little  money  and  did  not 
yet  resent  his  state  of  dependence  and  supervision.  He 
was  earning  very  near  the  amount  which  had  sufficed 
for  his  whole  family  and  more  than  twice  the  sum  paid 
to  his  sister  for  her  teaching  in  Edinburgh.  Measuring 
his  conditions  by  that  standard  he  thought  he  had  every 
reason  to  be  satisfied. — When  he  was  no  longer  with 
Peter  Leslie  during  the  day  he  began  almost  to  like  him, 
and  to  appreciate  his  simplicity,  his  contentment,  his 
freedom  from  doubt  or  qualm.  Also  as  the  father  of 

57 


58  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Selina  there  was  something  to  be  said  for  him. — Selina 
was  adorable,  growing  every  day  in  grace  as  every  day 
she  put  on  beauty  and  wore  it  as  though  she  were  afraid 
of  it,  afraid  of  herself.  Big  eyes  she  had,  too  big  for 
her  face,  which  was  framed  in  gold  ringlets  on  either 
side.  And  as  she  grew  she  put  on  more  and  more  clothes 
which  stiffened  her,  made  her  more  unreal,  more  apt 
to  Jamie's  idealism.  When  she  went  into  her  crinoline, 
as  she  did  on  Sundays,  she  was  altogether  removed  from 
her  devoted  and  secret  lover,  who  for  that  felt  only  the 
more  worshipfully  that  she  was  Woman. — He  thanked 
Heaven  for  guiding  his  heart  to  a  pure  love  in  the 
years  of  peril. — How  good  Selina  was  on  Sundays !  She 
would  sing  and  pray  in  church  with  a  demure  concen- 
tration that  moved  Jamie  to  a  choking  love  and  at  the 
same  time  reproached  him  for  being  moved  and  urged 
his  attention  to  follow  hers — straight  up  the  aisle  to  the 
chancel  rails.  And  as  they  walked  home  to  the  dinner 
of  roast  beef,  Yorkshire  pudding  and  pastry  she  would 
allow  Jamie  to  carry  her  prayer-book,  precious  burden! 
and  ask  him  if  he  did  not  think  her  papa  was  the  best 
man  in  the  world.  Jamie,  to  please  her,  would  agree 
and  forget  the  bullying  she  had  had  from  her  parent 
before  the  woman  in  her  began  so  astonishingly  to 
emerge  from  the  child.  Her  papa  was  the  best  of  men 
and  her  mamma  was  already  "poor  dear." 

The  arrival  of  Selina  in  the  adult  world  startled  Mrs. 
Leslie  into  an  attempt  to  be  old.  She  bought  a  cap  and 
tried  it  for  a  week  but  then  discarded  it.  Also  she  en- 
trusted Selina  with  certain  of  her  duties  but  soon  re- 
claimed them.  There  was  something  of  a  tussle  between 
mother  and  daughter.  Mrs.  Leslie  won  and  reduced 
Selina  to  the  position  of  her  pupil  to  learn  the  mystery 
of  keeping  house,  baking  bread,  sewing  and  mending. 


WORDS  59 

As  she  mastered  these  accomplishments  Selina  paraded 
them  before  Jamie,  who  marvelled,  and  before  her  fa- 
ther, who  began  to  dote  on  her,  and  to  allow  her  to  a 
certain  extent  to  replace  her  mother  in  his  thoughts. 
The  household  for  a  time  became  happier  because  of  the 
miracle  which  had  taken  place  in  it.  Finding  a  young 
creature  whose  charm  was  accessible  to  him  saved  Jamie 
from  much  tormented  egoism  and  little  by  little  he  found 
the  courage  to  be  lyrical.  Much  of  his  life  outside  the 
warehouse  seemed  to  him  to  be  pure  song,  and,  because 
he  had  this  outlet,  his  work  was  less  baleful  to  him,  nor 
was  he  oppressed  by  the  tyranny  of  those  above  him. 
He  began  to  write  long,  warm  and  happy  letters  to  his 
mother,  who  dashed  him  rather  by  urging  him  to  take 
life  more  seriously  and  to  remember  his  responsibility 
to  those  he  had  left  behind  him.  "Remember,"  she  said : 
"The  glory  of  a  woman  is  her  hair"  (poor  Maggie!), 
"but  the  glory  of  a  man  is  his  strength.  Your  Uncle 
Andrew  is  very  pleased  with  you.  Never  forget  his  gen- 
erosity and  remember  that  slow  and  sure  are  bound  to 
succeed.  Brilliancy  was  always  your  danger,  but  bril- 
liancy is  a  glittering  snare.  Oh !  I  do  pray  that  you  may 
be  kept  safe  in  the  terrible  city  until  I  can  come  with  Tom 
and  feel  sure  of  you.  I  am  a  little  anxious  about  Mary. 
It  seems  that  she  is  mixing  with  philosophers.  They 
will  turn  her  head.  It  is  so  fortunate  that  she  is  not 
beautiful." — "The  glory  of  a  woman,"  cried  Jamie  to 
himself,  "is  her  tenderness,  her  purity,  all  that  makes 
her  woman,  so  delicate  and  soft,  the  spirit  of  the  dove 
amid  harshness  and  despair."  He  said  this  because 
Selina's  hair  was  not  one  of  her  strong  points  and  also 
because  he  was  not  aware  of  being  particularly  strong. 
Hair  and  strength  therefore  were  not  words  which  he 
could  charge  with  his  lyrical  impulse,  and  that  was  the 


60  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

great  discovery  on  which  he  was  living  now  so  happily. 

After  her  arrival  in  Edinburgh  his  sister  Mary  took 
to  sending  him  her  poems — Odes  to  the  East  Wind,  to 
the  Castle,  to  High  Street  and  the  Wynds,  to  Mr.  H. 
and  to  Professor  B.'s  plaid.  He  was  roused  to  emulation 
and  found  that  he  could  do  much  better  himself,  though, 
perhaps,  not  quite  so  well  as  Robert  Burns.  However, 
he  had  his  moments  and  leaped  from  one  to  another 
towards  maturity,  and  with  each  leap  he  adored  the 
idea  of  Selina  more  and  was  less  amorously  conscious 
of  her.  At  last,  when  he  woke  to  the  fact  that  Selina 
had  a  number  of  other  admirers,  and  in  spite  of  her 
youth,  was  extremely  adroit  in  playing  them  off  one 
against  the  other,  he  was  astonished  to  find  that  he  did 
not  mind  in  the  least.  He  wrote  innumerable  poems  to 
her  name  and  never  showed  her  one.  The  only  person 
who  was  allowed  to  read  a  few  of  the  more  impersonal 
effusions  was  Mr.  Wilcox,  who,  finding  them  unsuitable 
for  recitation,  was  discouraging. 

The  miracle  of  Selina  had  its  effect  also  on  Mr.  Wil- 
cox, whom  Jamie  had  always  thought  of  as  a  person 
beyond  redemption  old.  He  became,  suddenly,  in  the 
course  of  one  afternoon,  a  companion,  almost  an  equal. 
He  sought  Jamie  out  one  day  in  the  warehouse  to  ask  him 
if  he  would  mind,  just  for  once,  playing  the  part  of  a  boy 
in  a  little  farce  he  was  getting  up — nothing  very  great— ^ 
just  something  to  amuse  at  a  Ladies'  Night  at  the  Gen- 
tlemen's Concerts.  As  Jamie  hesitated,  Mr.  Wilcox 
proceeded  to  say  that  he  knew  Church  people  did  not 
altogether  approve  of  the  theatre — 'he  knew  that — but 
this  was  for  a  charity.  So  grateful  was  Jamie  to  Mr. 
Wilcox  for  his  sudden  accession  to  the  ranks  of  ac- 
knowledgeable  and  not  awful  persons  that  he  consented. 
He  would  have  given  him  the  clothes  off  his  back  in  that 


WORDS  61 

moment !  It  was  an  easy  matter  to  give  the  scruples  of 
the  religion  to  which  he  was  attached  by  the  image  of 
Selina.  So  he  gave  them  and  promised  and  was  at  once 
attacked  by  conscience.  He  dared  say  nothing  to  the 
Leslies,  whose  most  reckless  gaiety  was  a  Spelling  Bee. 
He  had  to  invent  excuses  to  be  able  to  attend  rehearsals 
and  he  felt  so  guilty  as  he  made  them  that  Peter  at 
once  began  to  suspect  him  and  became  sarcastic: — "Has 
our  young  friend  begun  to  take  lessons  in  Chinese  or 
Choctaw?  ...  I  will  not  allow  Mrs.  Leslie  to  sit  up 
for  you.  I  will  sit  up  myself." — "Oh !  I  don't  want  you 
to  do  that,  sir.  I  am  not  likely  to  be  late,  but  I  could 
take  the  key,"  replied  Jamie. — The  key!  Not  for  one 
moment  would  Peter  part  with  that.  Not  even  his  wife 
was  entrusted  with  it;  never.  To  avoid  letting  it  out 
of  his  hands  Peter  would  go  to  the  farthest  limits  of  in- 
genuity, exhibit  in  the  matter  of  sitting  up  at  night  the 
most  heroic  endurance. — "No,  sir,"  he  cried.  "This  is 
not  an  apartment  house,  nor  is  Mrs.  Leslie  a  landlady. 
We  do  not  take  lodgers.  We  are  only  too  happy  to 
oblige  your  uncle  and  to  admit  you  to  our  family.  Ad- 
mitted to  it,  you  must  acknowledge  me  as  the  head  of 
it." — "As  I  have  done,  and  do." — "Then  where,"  said 
Peter,  suddenly  flattered  into  self -betrayal,  "where  are 
you  going?" — "About  my  business,"  almost  shouted 
Jamie,  and  Peter  countered  with:  "You  are  not  old 
enough  to  have  any." 

Off  went  Jamie  fuming.  Peter  had  gone  too  far  that 
time.  His  curiosity  was  getting  beyond  a  joke.  It 
was  time  he  learned  that  he  had  to  deal  with  a  Lawrie. 
He  might  pry  and  spy — as  he  did — upon  his  own  family, 
insisting  on  reading  all  letters  that  came  to  the  house 
and  most  of  those  that  went  out  of  it,  but  when  it 
came  to  a  Lawrie — hands  off !  In  his  indignation  Jamie 


62  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

knocked  Peter  down  from  the  pedestal  on  which  as 
Selina's  father  he  had  set  him  and  put  Mr.  Wilcox  on 
it  in  his  stead. 

That  worthy  gave  his  young  friend  a  drink  when  he 
arrived,  rum-toddy  hot.  His  rooms  were  cosy,  and, 
Jamie  felt,  excitingly  disreputable,  though  in  the  detail 
of  its  furniture  it  was  not  unlike  the  Leslies'  dining-room. 
Perhaps  it  was  the  play  bills  on  the  wall — Theatre  Royal, 
Drury  Lane,  Sadler's  Wells,  and  the  prints  of  the  great 
Kemble,  Sarah  Siddons  and  the  Little  Theatres  in  the 
Haymarket. 

"Extraordinary,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox,  "how  like  you  are 
to  Kemble ;  something  between  him  and  Henry  Fielding. 
Ah!  What  would  I  not  have  given  to  have  had  your 
nose.  A  tragic  nose:  no  mistake  about  it;  a  nose  like 
that  gives  you  the  air,  the  tragic  air,  the  dignity.  Now 
with  your  nose  and  my  talent,  do  you  know  where  I 
should  be?" 

"I  do  not,"  replied  Jamie. 

"At  the  top  of  the  tree.  Where  was  Kean  when  they 
discovered  him? — But  a  face  like  mine  is  a  calamity. 
Can  you  express  a  tragic  fire  in  a  suet  dumpling?  You 
just  watch  my  face  when  it  should  be  showing  horror." 
He  recited  the  last  few  lines  of  Clarence's  speech  from 
Richard  III.  with  such  vigour  and  intensity  that  Jamie 
shivered  all  up  his  spine  and  paid  no  heed  to  the  amaz- 
ing contortions  going  on  on  Mr.  Wilcox's  round  pale 
face.  It  took  longer  for  the  auditor  than  for  the  reciter 
to  recover. 

"Well?"  asked  Mr.  Wilcox. 

"That  was  very  good,"  replied  Jamie. — "I've  never 
seen  a  play." 

"Good !    I  should  think  so.    It's  the  Swan,  but  it  wants 


WORDS  63 

dignity :  it  wants  Kemble,  it  wants  Kean,  it  wants  a  face 
like  yours.  Try,  do  try." 

So  Jamie  repeated  the  words  until  he  had  them  nearly 
by  heart.  Then  he  let  fly.— "Oh!  oh!  oh!"  cried  Mr. 
Wilcox  in  ecstasy.  "It's  a  mask,  it's  a  tragic  mask,  your 
face;  but  don't  lose  yourself,  never,  never  lose  yourself. 
Keep  in  the  last  inch  and  a  bit,  so  that  you  know  that 
it  is- yourself  being  not  yourself. — Ah!  that's  better. 
Ah!  that's  acting,  that  is. — Remember,  it's  a  dream. — 
'Some  lay  in  dead  men's  skulls.' — Come,  I'll  read  you  the 
play." 

So  saying,  Mr.  Wilcox  stood  up  by  the  mantelpiece 
and  read  aloud  for  a  couple  of  hours,  at  the  end  of 
which,  closing  the  book,  he  said : — '"Ah !  that's  literature, 
that  is!  That's  what  you  should  be  up  to  with  those 
verses  of  yours;  get  them  so  that  they  fill  your  voice." 

"I  wrote  one  the  other  day  which  I  said  over  to  my- 
self. I  had  a  bath  and  I  said  it  out  loud." 

"Let's  have  it  then!    Let's  have  it?" 

"But  what  about  the  rehearsal?" 

"Oh,  we  can't  rehearse  after  the  Bard.  We  can  do 
without  rehearsal.  You  don't  have  anything  to  say. 
You're  just  a  boy  in  the  street.  I'm  a  blind  beggar.  You 
steal  my  dog.  A  real  dog  on  the  stage.  That's  what 
keeps  Punch  and  Judy  alive — dog  Toby.  But  let's  have 
it— the  poem,  I  mean." 

Jamie  gulped  down  a  nausea  which  was  creeping  over 
him  and  in  a  huge  voice,  as  near  a  copy  as  he  could  get 
to  Mr.  Wilcox's,  he  roared: 

"I  am  thy  daunted  lover  and  I  gx) 
Abashed,  ashamed  and  fearful  of  thy  'No!' 
Ah!  could  I  say  what  hopes  within  me  swell 
I'd  change  the  world  with  my  heart's  miracle." 


64  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"Too  thin!  Too  thin!"  cried  Mr.  Wilcox.  "But  gifted, 
gifted.  .  .  .  Come,  what  follows?" 

Tears  rushed  to  Jamie's  eyes: — "That's  all!"  he  con- 
fessed. "It  didn't  seem  to  me  to  need  any  more.  At 
least  I  didn't  feel  any  more." 

Mr.  Wilcox  tried  to  console  him  by  saying  that  he 
might  use  it  for  an  encore  piece,  but  the  unhappy  youth 
was  beyond  consolation.  It  was  torn  out  of  his  fancies. 
Mr.  Wilcox,  Shakespeare,  King  Richard  had  provided 
him  with  a  reality  by  the  test  of  which  all  his  life  since 
he  had  come  to  Thrigsby  withered  away.  What  words! 
Like  the  tail  of  a  comet.  He  caught  hold  of  it  and  was 
whirled  away. — He  had  another  rum-toddy  and  sat  with 
Mr.  Wilcox  talking,  talking,  of  the  theatre,  of  life,  of 
love,  of  the  abominations  of  commerce,  of  the  remorse- 
less tyranny  of  Keith  Bros.  &  Stevenson. — '"Can  you 
conceive,'  said  Mr.  Wilcox,  shining  rummily,  "Lord 
Byron  in  our  office?  He  would  dash  himself  to  death 
against  the  bars  of  his  cage.  Ledgers  and  books  do  not 
a  dungeon  make,  nor  office  walls  a  prison.  I  am  free  as 

my  talent,  my  art " — "Free!  Free!"  echoed  Jamie. 

— "And  you,  a  poet,  handsome  as  a  god,  brilliant  as  a 
Bacchus,  will  never  be  a  slave." — '"Never!"  sobbed  Jamie, 
"never!"  He  caught  sight  of  the  misty  face  of  the 
clock.  It  said  half -past  eleven.  He  rose  unsteadily  to 
his  feet  and  lurched  away.  Half  way  home  he  was 
seized  with  a  poetic  impulse  and  stood  in  the  middle  of 
the  road  until  he  had  found  a  rhyme  for  wig. — At  last 
he  found  himself  back  at  the  Leslies'.  Peter  was  waiting 
up  for  him.  Jamie  burst  into  tears  and  rushed  away  up- 
stairs to  hear,  as  he  reached  the  landing,  Peter's  deep 
voice  saying:  "Pah!  Degraded  beast !" 


CHAPTER  VII 

AFFAIRS 


I  WAS  fou,"  said  Jamie  as  he  woke  up  and  it  was  as 
though  someone  else  had  spoken  the  words  in  a  tone 
of  loud  reproach,  and  as  he  went  down  the  stairs  they 
creaked  "Fou!  Fou!"  at  every  step.  No  one  looked  at 
him,  no  one  spoke  to  him  at  breakfast,  after  which 
Peter  astonished  him  by  saying  a  long  grace,  ending: — 
"Lord,  make  us  fit  to  eat  our  food  this  day." — Jamie 
caught  Selina's  eye.  It  made  him  blush. — "Does  she 
know?"  he  thought.  "I  am  unworthy.  I  am  sullied." 
But  as  soon  as  he  was  out  of  the  house  his  condition 
vanished.  He  squared  himself  and  felt  that  he  was  a 
man  and  had  asserted  himself.  Old  Peter  had  not  dared 
to  say  anything. — "Oh  aye,"  he  said  to  himself,  "I'm 
sullied  and  the  deil's  the  better  for  it."  And  he  began 
to  take  a  keen  pleasure  in  the  morning  air,  in  the  fields 
along  which  he  had  to  skirt,  with  the  black  river  flowing 
through  them;  in  the  girls  with  their  shawls  over  their 
heads  going  to  the  mills;  in  the  children  trotting  along 
with  their  fathers;  in  the  tall  smoking  chimneys  that 
grew  more  and  more  closely  together  as  he  approached 
the  warehouse.  And  suddenly  he  found  his  rhyme  to 
wig: 

"Wee  Maggie  need  not  scratch  her  wig 
When  flies  upon  it  dance  a  jig." 
65 


66  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

He  laughed  merrily  and  his  heart  was  filled  with  affec- 
tion for  Maggie  and  the  sense  of  home  possessed  him 
so  that  he  became  almost  defiant  of  the  town  wherein  he 
was  a  foreigner. — Thrigsby  on  the  Irk.  What  a  name 
for  a  river!  But  the  Thrigsbeians  were  pleased  with  it. 
They  were  pleased  with  everything.  Always,  they  said, 
they  were  a  day  ahead  of  the  rest  of  England. — "I'm 
pleased  with  myself  too,"  said  Jamie,  and  for  a  moment 
or  two  he  felt  so.  Then  he  thought  with  shame  of  Mr. 
Wilcox  praising  his  face,  his  nose;  and  yet,  coming 
from  Mr.  Wilcox  there  was  no  cause  for  shame.  The 
man  was  carried  away.  Fou?  Nay,  drunk  with  words. 
— "I  must  go  canny,"  thought  Jamie.  "I  wouldna  be 
like  Mr.  Wilcox  for  the  world.  But  all  the  same  I'd 
rather  be  he  than  Mr.  Leslie." 

There  was  a  very  pleasant  savour  in  thus  weighing  up 
this  strange  world,  his  ideas  of  which  were  beginning 
to  take  shape. 

He  found  Mr.  Wilcox  pacing  up  and  down  outside 
the  office  door  waiting  for  him. — "Ah!  ah!"  he  cried. 
"I  was  afraid  you  were  not  coming.  I  was  afraid  you 
were  perhaps — ah — the  worse.  I  was  oppressed  by  a 
feeling  that  I  had  been  inconsiderate.  I  find  it  hard  to 
remember  that  you  are  so  young.  And  from  the  way 
Mr.  Leslie  looked  at  me  when  he  came  in  I  was 
afraid " 

"If  I  murdered  my  mother,"  replied  Jamie,  "I  would 
not  tell  Mr.  Leslie."  And  he  was  hurt  and  puzzled  be- 
cause Mr.  Wilcox  laughed,  for  he  was  unaware  of  the 
grotesqueness  of  his  words.  Mr.  Wilcox  whistled 
"Scots  Wha  Hae,"  and  brought  his  hand  down  on  his 
young  friend's  shoulder  and  said: — "Oh!  he's  a  good 
sort  is  old  Leslie  and  I've  seen  him  liquored  too."- 
"Mr.  Leslie?"— -Mr.  Wilcox  winked:— "A  fine  sight," 


AFFAIRS  67 

he  said,  "but  I'm  bound  to  say  that  I  think  it  was  an 
accident,  as  indeed  it  is  with  most  of  us." 

Jamie  was  grateful  to  him  for  that.  It  removed  the 
sting  from  Peter's  words,  and  gave  him  absolution.  He 
had  fallen,  yes,  but  as  he  might  fall  in  the  street  from 
treading  on  the  peel  of  an  orange.  How  wonderfully 
Mr.  Wilcox  smoothed  out  the  difficult  path !  Mr.  Wilcox 
appeared,  and  lo !  there  were  no  difficulties ;  only  pleas- 
ures and  proud  accomplishments.  He  made  a  man  feel 
that  he  was  a  man,  with  a  place  in  the  world,  and  a  big 
voice  inside  him  wherewith  to  make  himself  heard.  Feel- 
ing altogether  a  man,  Jamie  held  out  his  hand  and  Mr. 
Wilcox  took  it  and  clasped  it  warmly,  genially,  com- 
radely. 

"Good!"  said  Mr.  Wilcox;  "we'll  have  other  even- 
ings." 

"Aye!"  replied  Jamie,  "but  I'll  no  be  fou  again.  It's 
in  my  head  still  and  my  tongue  is  parched." 

"Tut !"  said  Mr.  Wilcox.  "You  know  what  it  is  and 
if  you  do  no  worse  than  that  you'll  come  to  no  great 
harm." 

"Harm?"  replied  Jamie.  "It's  good  I'm  to  come  to. 
I'm  the  eldest  of  my  family  and  my  youngest  sister 
has  had  a  great  misfortune." 

"You'll  do,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox,  "you'll  do,  but  devil 
take  me  if  I  know  what  you're  to  do  in  Keith's." 

Jamie  set  his  jaw,  squared  his  shoulders  and  with 
the  one  word:  "Work!"  plunged  in  at  the  warehouse 
door. 

Just  before  the  midday  interval  he  was  sent  for  to  his 
uncle's  room.  Moon-face  sat  there  with  his  finger-tips 
pressed  together,  crooning  through  his  shut  lips.  The 
little  eyes  under  the  puckered  lids  shot  a  curt  greeting. 
Fear  and  exasperation  ran  through  Jamie,  but  he  pulled 


68  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

himself  together  and,  glaring  at  the  heavy  figure  sitting 
at  the  table,  he  said  to  himself :  "He's  a  man,  and  I'm 
a  man.  Figs  to  him." — And  there  shot  into  his  mind 
what  he  had  lately  heard  in  the  office,  how  Andrew 
Keith's  wife  had  run  away  from  him,  with  a  Turk.  A 
Turk,  bigod!  Almost  a  nigger!  And  how  on  the  day 
she  did  it  Andrew  came  down  to  the  office  as  though  noth- 
ing had  happened,  and  that  very  day  scooped  in  one  of 
the  biggest  deals  he  had  ever  handled.  And  she  was  a 
very  beautiful  woman,  was  Mrs.  Andrew. — "Yes,  sir," 
said  Jamie. — "Sit  down." — Jamie  sat  down  wondering  if 
Peter  Leslie  had  told.  But  there  was  no  meance  in  An- 
drew's face;  only  the  usual  stony  indifference.  What  a 
monument  of  a  man !  Perhaps  in  his  icy  way  his  view  of 
his  nephew's  downfall  was  as  generous  as  Mr.  Wilcox's. 
To  Jamie's  relief  Andrew's  first  words  were  almost 
kindly.  There  was  a  thaw  in  the  frozen  air. 

"Let  me  see,"  said  Andrew. 

"Yes,  Uncle." 

"You  are  now  in  the  warehouse." 

"Yes,  Uncle." 

"And  liking  it,  I  hope?" 

"Yes,  Uncle.     I  like  some  of  the  men  very  much." 

"That  is  not  what  I  asked.  The  work,  I  meant.  I 
want  to  know  how  much  you  have  learned  since  you 
have  been  with  us.  Can  you  describe  for  me  the 
processes  of  the  business? — 'Where  does  the  cotton  come 
from,  what  do  we  do  with  it,  where  do  we  send  it?" 

"It  comes  from  America.  We  spin  it  and  weave  it 
and  ship  it  to  all  parts  of  the  world,  but  especially  to  the 
East." 

"Good,  but  it  is  not  quite  so  simple  as  all  that." 

"No,  Uncle." 

"And  why  is  it  not  so  simple?" 


AFFAIRS  69 

"I  suppose  because  there  are  so  many  other  people 
doing  it" 

Andrew  swung  round  and  glared  at  his  nephew. 

"Have  you  learnt  nothing  of  the  reputation  of  the 
firm?" 

"Oh,  yes,  Uncle.  It  is  one  of  the  biggest  firms.  But 
you  see  I  have  only  had  to  do  with  the  order-books 
and  the  stock-books." 

"Ever  heard  of  a  place  called  the  Exchange?  There 
are  people  called  brokers,  there  are  people  called  agents ! 
You  may  have  heard  of  them?" 

"Oh,  yes." 

"Then  what  do  you  imagine  they  are  all  doing  ?" 

"Buying  and  selling." 

"But  what?" 

Jamie  was  by  now  completely  bewildered. 

"You  may  not  be  aware  that  I  have  written  books  on 
the  subject." 

"No,  Uncle." 

"Did  you  come  into  my  firm  to  learn  the  business,  or 
did  you  not?" 

"Yes,  Uncle/  You  told  me  to  learn  French  and  I 
have  been  doing  so.  I  thought  perhaps  I  was  to  go  to 
Lille  with  Mr.  Mackintosh." 

"You  must  know  something  of  the  business  before  you 
can  represent  the  firm." 

"Indeed,  sir,  I  did  learn  what  I  could  from  the  stock- 
books  and  the  order-books." 

"You  could  have  learnt  that  in  a  week  and  then  come 
and  asked  to  be  transferred." 

Jamie  was  humiliated  and  enraged.  He  had  been 
hurt  at  being  so  thoroughly  ignored  and  now  to  find 
that  the  ignoring  had  been  deliberate  was  too  much. 
Andrew  had  said,  "Employer  and  employee." — Em- 


70  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

ployees  never"  were  allowed  near  Andrew.  Why  was  no 
one  ever  straightforward  with  him  except  poor  silly  Wil- 
cox,  old  Cocks-and-hens  ? 

"I  confess,"  said  Andrew,  "that  I  am  disappointed, 
grieved  and  disappointed.  I  gave  you  an  opening  for 
which  many  young  men  would  give  their  eyes  and  you 
behave  as  though  the  firm  existed  merely  to  provide  you 
with  an  occupation.  I  am  used  to  that  from  my  clerks, 
but  from  my  own  nephew " 

"But  you  said  I  was  to  forget  here — you  said  it  in 
this  room — you  said  that  I  was  to  forget  that  I  was  your 
nephew." 

"Well,  well,"  said  Andrew,  "You're  frank,  that's 
something,  that's  something.  But  I  want  you  to  get  on. 
You'll  never  get  on  unless  you  take  an  interest  and  find 
things  out  for  yourself.  I  have  been  in  correspondence 
with  your  mother.  Your  brother  Thomas  is  a  little 
young  to  make  a  start,  but  she  is  anxious  to  be  with  you, 
though  I  have  assured  her  that  your  conduct  has  been 
altogether  satisfactory." 

Jamie  blushed. 

"We  have  arranged  therefore  that  after  your  holiday, 
which  you  are  to  take  in  August,  she  and  your  brothers 
and  sisters  shall  return  with  you  and  set  up  in  some 
small  house.  I  shall  start  you  then  with  a  substantial 
addition  to  your  present  nominal  salary.  Until  your 
holiday  you  must  make  up  for  lost  time." 

"Yes,  Uncle." 

"That  will  do." 

"I'm  sorry  I  have  disappointed  you.  I  really  was 
interested.  The  men ' 

"Men,"  said  Andrew,  "are  not  interesting." 

"But  Mr.  Leslie " 

"Is  Mr.  Leslie  to  be  your  model  or  am  I?" 


AFFAIRS  71 

Involuntarily  Jamie  groaned : 

"Neither,  God  help  me !" 

"What  did  you  say?"  asked  Andrew,  and  Jamie  on  a 
sudden  flux  of  emotion  cried: 

"Please,  Uncle  Andrew,  let  me  go.  I  want  to  please 
you  and  my  mother.  I  have  no  other  ambition.  I  don't 
want  to  say  anything  which  will  distress  you,  but  I'm 
afraid  we  do  not  understand  each  other  very  well.  You 
must  give  me  time.  To-day  I  am  afraid  I  am  not  very 
well.  I  don't  altogether  know  what  I  am  saying." 

"Tut,  tut,"  rejoined  Andrew,  and  he  rose  and  planted 
himself  in  front  of  the  fire,  tucked  down  his  head  and 
swung  his  hands  behind  his  back. — "You  must,"  he  said, 
"you  must  learn  to  take  a  serious  view  of  things.  Here 
in  Thrigsby  we  are  creating  the  future  of  England. 
Look  at  the  Peels!  It  was  their  determination  that  the 
great  business  houses  should  be  represented  in  the  Gov- 
ernment. What  they  aimed  at  they  achieved.  Let  that 
be  your  motto.  What  is  the  motto  of  the  Keiths? — 
Surge!  I  don't  forget  it.  We're  plain  men  in  Thrigsby. 
No  fal-lals  about  us,  but  we  hit  the  mark  every  time. 
Think  of  the  Peels  and  cultivate  the  civic  virtues." — 
Andrew  opened  his  mouth  a  little  wider  for  a  flow  of 
eloquence,  but  Jamie  cut  him  short  with  "Yes,  Uncle," 
and  bolted  from  the  room.  He  could  bear  it  no  more, 
but  no  sooner  was  he  out  in  the  passage  than  he  was 
filled  -with  alarm.  This  time  surely  he  had  done  it! 
His  uncle  would  never  forgive  him.  He  must  go  back  at 
once  and  apologise,  for  he  had  his  mother  to  think  of 
and  Tom  and  wee  Maggie.  So  he  crept  back  and  tapped 
nervously  at  the  door. — "Come  in !" — He  sidled  in.  Old 
Andrew  was  at  his  table  sitting  with  his  finger-tips 
pressed  together.  He  looked  up. — -"Well?" 

"I — I—"  said  Jamie,— "I  thought  I  heard  you  call." 


72  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

— "I  ?  No,  oh,  no !" — The  moon- face  was  blank  and  for- 
bidding.— '"I  was  afraid,"  said  Jamie,  "I  had  interrupted 
you." — "No,  no.  I  had  said  all  I  wished  to  say." — '"I'm 
sorry  if  I " 

There  was  a  long  pause.  At  last  Andrew  exclaimed : 
"Get  out." 

Jamie  with  one  bound  was  through  the  door.  He 
closed  it  and  leaned  against  the  wall  shaking  with  merri- 
ment. His  fears  had  been  so  absurd.  Already  Moon- 
face  had  forgotten  him.  All  that  he  had  said  had  been 
just  talk.  With  painful  suddenness  Jamie  realised  that 
he  ought  to  have  been  flattering  the  old  man.  The  idea 
was  horrible  to  him  and  he  shook  it  away  and  sought 
relief  in  mockery:  "O  Uncle,  teach  me  to  walk  in  thy 
footsteps,  that  I  may  be  terrible  to  my  nephews  when 
I  have  any,  and  they  may  respect  me  and  wonder  what 
the  devil's  going  on  behind  my  big  white  face !" 

He  sought  out  Mr.  Wilcox  then  and  asked  him :  "Do 
you  think  I'll  ever  make  a  Parliament  man?" — "Well," 
rejoined  Wilcox,  "your  face  would  look  well  on  a  statue 
when  you're  dead." — "I've  been  talking  to  my  uncle,  and 
I'm  to  be  like  the  Peels." — "I  don't  think  you're  hard 
enough  and  I  don't  think  you'll  ever  be  rich  enough. 
These  cotton-spinners  think  it's  their  merits  makes  Lon- 
don look  at  them,  but  it  isn't;  it's  their  money." — '"I 
think  I  could  spend  money  all  right." — "I've  no  doubt  of 
that,  but  you'd  never  make  it  except  you  married  a  rich 
wench." — Jamie's  thoughts  flew  to  Selina.  "I'll  never  do 
that,"  he  said  and  then  broke  away :  "Tell  me,  Mr.  Wil- 
cox, how  much  do  you  know  about  the  business  ?"- 
"Why,  it  goes  on.  It  turns  over  a  mint  of  money.  I  get 
my  little  bit  out  of  it  and  that's  all  I  care  about.  Why 
should  I?  As  long  as  I  don't  make  mistakes,  no  one 
has  anything  to  say.  But  then  I  am  a  fool  and  do  not 


AFFAIRS  73 

matter." — "I  shouldn't  have  thought  you  were  a  fool, 
Mr.  Wilcox." — "Oh!  yes,  but  not  a  damned  fool.  We 
must  get  in  that  rehearsal  before  next  Saturday.  I  was 
a  fool  last  night  and  I  can't  be  too  sorry  about  it.  I 
ought  to  have  remembered  who  you  are  and  that  I  am 
so  much  older  than  you." — "But  I  don't  mind  a  bit," 
protested  Jamie,  "truly  I  don't.  I'm  not  going  to  shout 
it  from  the  house-tops  of  course.  And  as  for  you  being 
a  fool,  Mr.  Wilcox,  well — you  shine  when  I  compare 
you  with  my  uncle.  Indeed  I  think  you  have  something 
like  genius." 

Mr.  Wilcox  brought  his  fist  down  on  his  desk  and 
tilted  back  his  stool.  "Well,  I'm  hanged,"  he  cried,  "if 
you  haven't  hit  what  I've  been  thinking  these  last  ten 
years.  But  if  he's  the  fool  and  I'm  the  genius  why  is 
he  where  he  is  and  why  am  I  the  quill-driver?" 

"Indeed,  Mr.  Wilcox,"  replied  Jamie,  "I  don't  know, 
but  I  should  like  to  know." 

"For  one  thing" — Mr.  Wilcox  let  his  stool  fall  back 
— '"for  one  thing  he's  impressive  and  I'm  not.  But  you 
mustn't  call  me  Mr.  Wilcox.  Call  me  Sammy." 

"I  would  be  glad  if  you  would  call  me  Jamie." 

"We  must  have  a  drink  on  this,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox, 
"and  you  shall  write  an  Ode  to  Friendship." 

They  shook  hands  and  on  that  Peter  Leslie  came  in 
with  an  open  ledger  in  his  arms.  He  looked  his  most 
primly  severe  at  the  two.  Mr.  Wilcox  had  reached  out 
for  his  hat. 

"Going  out,  Mr.  Wilcox?" 

"Call  of  nature,  Mr.  Leslie,  call  of  nature." 

"There  is  a  slight  mistake  somewhere.  I  can't  trace 
a  reply  of  ours.  We  must  stay  until  it  is  put  straight." 

"Is  it  my  mistake  ?" 

"It  is  a  mistake  for  which  the  room  is  responsible." 


74  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"O  cursed  spite,  that  ever  I  was  born  to  put  it  right. 
I'll  be  back  soon." 

Mr.  Wilcox  hurried  Jamie  away  to  the  Blue  Boar 
where  in  good  ale,  hurriedly,  they  pledged  their  friend- 
ship.— "After  the  holidays,"  said  Jamie,  "I  shall  be  able 
to  ask  you  to  come  and  see  me.  I  am  leaving  the  Leslies 
and  my  mother  is  coming  to  live  with  me." — "Don't  you 
make  no  mistake,  young  feller  my  lad,  I'm  not  the  sort 
of  friend  you  ask  to  see  your  Ma.  Is  she  old  Andrew's 
sister?" — "Yes." — "Ah!  that  accounts  for  a  good  deal, 
that  does.  No.  You  must  understand  that.  I'm  no 
good  at  Ma's.  I  am  a  man's  man-friend,  I  am.  I  must 
get  back  to  Peterkin.  He's  a  Ma  if  you  like.  Every 
year  or  so  he  used  to  come  down  to  the  office  and  say: 
'Another  boy,'  or  'A  girl  this  time,'  and  I  used  to  chip 
him  and  say:  'But  you  haven't  been  away.'  He  never 
saw  the  joke.  Hu!  hu." — Jamie  did  not  see  it  either 
and  stood  trying  to  puzzle  it  out  while  Mr.  Wilcox  paid 
for  the  drink,  reminded  him  that  he  must  come  for  re- 
hearsal before  the  Saturday  and  hurried  away. — Very 
slowly  Jamie  walked  out  into  the  street:  "You  haven't 
been  away.  Why  should  he  have  been  away,  unless  Mrs. 
Leslie  were  very  ill  ?  Even  so  she  would  have  had  some- 
one looking  after  her,  a  nurse  or  a  doctor."  Then  he 
fell  to  puzzling  out  the  implied  resemblance  between 
Peter  Leslie  and  his  mother. — 'He  was  distressed.  The 
humour  of  Mr.  Wilcox  had  estranged  him,  almost  car- 
ried him  over  to  the  army  of  alien  persons  headed  by 
Moon-face.  By  way  of  reclaiming  him  Jamie  began  to 
revolve  in  his  mind  the  composition  of  the  suggested 
Ode  to  Friendship.  He  got  as  far  as  "Bond  of  souls  de- 
sirous of "  Of  what?  Truth ?— Youth— Ruth- 
Sooth — Love  ?  Above — Dove — 'Prove — Cove — Knowl- 
edge? College.  And  what  led  back  to  the  image  of 


AFFAIRS  75 

Mary  sitting  by  the  window  in  the  little  house  in  Kirk- 
cudbright drumming  out  syllables  with  her  fingers.  He 
became  desperately  home-sick,  was  frightened  of  the 
streets  and  the  noise,  the  huge  buildings.  In  desperation 
he  ran  back  to  the  warehouse  and  plunged  into  work,  say- 
ing to  himself:  "I  do  understand  it,  I  do,  I  do.  It  is 
very  wonderful  and  I  like  it."  Yet  behind  this  despera- 
tion were  words : — "He  that  hath  no  friend  is  not,  One 
half  a  man,  I'd  rather  be  a  friendly  sot,  Than  mar  the 
plan,  Great  Nature  made  in  giving  hearts,  To  be  endued 
with  human  arts." — He  would  not  admit  the  verse-form, 
but  stuck  to  it  that  in  checking  figures  relating  to  bales 
of  cloth,  he  was  learning  the  business  and  assisting  his 
uncle  to  create  the  future  of  England. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
TIBBY  M'PHAIL 


THE  young  Leslies  always  said  that  their  mother 
could  see  through  walls  and  hear  a  pin  drop  in 
the  next  street,  and  Jamie  often  felt  that  she  knew  more 
about  him  than  he  knew  himself.  He  was  not  altogether 
surprised  therefore  when  she  warned  him  against  Mr. 
Wilcox,  in  spite  of  the  care  he  had  taken  to  conceal  the 
evenings  spent  with  that  worthy,  and  the  performance 
at  the  Gentlemen's  Concert  Hall,  Mr.  Wilcox  had  taught 
him  to  smoke  and  introduced  him  to  his  own  brand  of 
tobacco. 

"He,  he,  Mr.  Lawrie,"  said  Mrs.  Leslie  one  night  when 
Peter  was  late  at  the  office.  "I'm  sorry  you've  taken  to 
smoking.  I  have  made  my  own  boys  promise  me  that 
they  will  not  touch  tobacco  until  they  are  twenty-one." 

Jamie  blushed.  "I  just  thought  I'd  try  it,"  he  replied. 
Against  Mrs.  Leslie  he  could  never  keep  up  his  manly 
dignity  for  long.  She  did  not  mince  matters.  "It's  a 
nasty  dirty  habit,"  she  said,  "and  it  runs  away  with  a 
terrible  lot  of  money,  which  reminds  me  that  you  want  a 
pair  of  new  boots.  I  couldn't  let  you  go  back  to  your 
mamma  with  your  feet  worn  out  as  they  will  be  if  you 
wear  those  boots  much  longer."  And  she  pursued  the 
subject  until  she  had  forced  Jamie  into  the  confession 
that  he  had  no  money  put  by  whatever  and  could  not 

76 


TIBBY  M'PHAIL  77 


afford  a  new  pair  of  boots  for  at  least  a  month. — 
"Money  does  fly,"  said  Mrs.  Leslie,  "but  it  oughtn't  to, 
you  know,  when  you  have  no  one  else  to  spend  it  on.  It 
isn't  my  place  to  say  anything,  I  know,  but  Mr.  Leslie 
is  Scotch  too  and  he  really  has  been  very  worried  over 
your  seeing  so  much  of  Mr.  Wilcox." — "I  like  Mr.  Wil- 
cox." — "Oh,  yes,  so  do  I,  but  he  is  such  a  bachelor,  now 
isn't  he?  And  Mr.  Leslie  was  quite  proud  of  being 
chosen  to  have  you  in  his  house,  Mr.  Lawrie,  and  you 
know  you  haven't  been  to  church  for  weeks  and  weeks." 
— '"But  really,  Mrs.  Leslie,  when  I  say  I  like  Mr.  Wilcox 
it  doesn't  mean  that  I  like  everything  he  does  and  says. 
Believe  me,  Mr.  Wilcox  does  not  set  himself  up  as  a 
model." — "Oh,  you  dear  boy!"  Mrs.  Leslie  flung  her 
arms  round  his  neck  and  kissed  him.  "Of  course  I  know 
you  would  never  come  to  any  harm,  but  Mr.  Leslie  has 
been  worried  and  I  thought  I  had  better  say  something. 
I  haven't  been  very  horrid,  have  I?" — That  was  how 
she  always  ended  with  her  children  when  she  had  to  give 
them  the  winnowing  words  made  necessary  by  the  grow- 
ing menace  in  her  husband. — "It's  always  better  to  have 
it  out,  don't  you  think?"  she  added.  And  Jamie,  hold- 
ing her  hand  and  marvelling  how  young  she  looked,  re- 
plied :  "I  would  hate  to  have  anything  in  my  life  which 
I  would  have  to  keep  back  from  you." — "I  must  kiss 
you  again  for  that.  Oh,  I  do  hope  my  own  boys  will  feel 
the  same  about  me.  I  shall  be  truly  sorry  when  your 
mamma  comes  and  takes  you  away  from  me,  though  I 
am  dying  to  meet  her,  for  she  must  be  a  wonderful 
woman." — "She  is  that." — "I  hope  you  will  live  near." 
— "I  would  like  it.  I  prefer  this  part  of  Thrigsby  to 
any  other." — i"So  do  I.  It  is  really  quite  genteel  if  it 
weren't  so  near  the  synagogue  and  the  prison." 

So  they  rattled  on,  Jamie  delighted  to  have  done  with 


78  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

concealment  and  deception,  Mrs.  Leslie  rejoicing  to  have 
her  sinner,  if  not  repentant,  at  least  frank.  He  promised 
her  he  would  have  a  pair  of  new  boots  before  he  went 
home  for  his  holidays,  and,  by  seeing  Mr.  Wilcox  only 
once  or  twice  a  week,  he  contrived  it. 

He  applied  himself  more  diligently  to  his  work  and 
went  on  'Change  with  Mr.  Clulow  and  marvelled  at  the 
crowds  of  men  standing  for  hours  apparently  only  to 
discuss  politics  or  racing,  with  business  somehow  being 
done  among  them.  Mr.  Clulow  was  very  kind  and  ex- 
plained something  of  the  mystery  of  prices  and  futures 
and  Jamie  began  to  feel  that  somehow  the  office  also 
was  romantic  and  interesting  and  he  found  Mr.  Wilcox's 
contempt  of  it  all  rather  irritating. — With  Bell  he  went 
over  to  Liverpool  one  day  and  saw  the  ships  loading 
and  unloading.  He  loved  that.  It  made  him  feel  that 
the  world  was  wide  and  yet  that  his  place  in  it  was 
important.  It  was  all  very  well  for  Mr.  Wilcox  to  talk 
of  liberty.  What  dearer  liberty  was  there  than  the  feel- 
ing he  had  then  as  he  stood  watching  the  ships  in  the 
wide  river,  the  ships  by  the  wharfs,  the  ships  coming  and 
going,  not  for  a  mere  childish  joy,  but  with  a  purpose? 
He  almost  forgot  that  he  was  a  Scotsman  and  came  near 
to  admitting  that  there  was  something  in  England,  some- 
thing in  Thrigsby  after  all. — And  so  there  is;  the  noble 
effort  in  the  conquest  of  mankind  by  man. — Ships  were 
ever  after  that  the  symbol  of  liberty,  the  emblem  of  the 
free  toiling  spirit.  He  was  lifted  out  of  himself,  and 
knew  that  his  feeling  was  genuine,  because  when  he 
sought  for  words  to  describe  it  he  was  shamed  into  si- 
lence. 

However,  his  habit  of  fishing  words  out  of  his  emo- 
tions had  its  revenge  and  drove  him  on  to  the  composi- 
tion of  a  new  cycle  of  Selina  poems.  These  she  found. 


TIBBY  M'PHAIL  79 


They  pleased  her  and  she  set  herself  to  please  him. 
With  the  result  that  he  went  to  church,  took  a  walk  with 
her  after  evening  service,  declared  his  love  for  her  and 
kissed  her. — '"Shall  I  speak  to  your  mamma  about  it?" — 
"Don't  be  silly,"  said  Selina. — So  the  affair  was  clan- 
destine and  for  a  few  weeks  its  folly  provided  a  pleas- 
urable warmth.  When  Jamie  left  on  his  holidays  they 
had  a  magnificent  parting. — "Every  night,"  said  Jamie, 
"I  shall  think  of  you  and  compose  a  poem." — '"Every 
night,"  said  Selina,  "I  shall  think  of  you  and  keep  a 
rose  under  my  pillow." — "When  I  am  rich,"  said  Jamie, 
"I  will  retire  and  we  will  live  in  Scotland."  So  saying, 
he  handed  her  a  copy  of  the  poems  of  Robert  Burns. 
She  opened  it  at  "The  Lass  That  Made  the  Bed  to  Me" 
and  slapped  the  pages  to  with  a  blush  and  a  stifled 
giggle.  The  colour  in  her  pale  cheeks  made  her  en- 
chanting. "Poor  Burns!"  sighed  Jamie.  "Poor  Robin! 
He  would  have  loved  you." — Selina  could  not  contain 
herself  and  her  giggle  broke  into  laughter.  "Oh,  Jamie," 
she  said,  "you  would  be  such  a  darling  if  you  were  an 
English  boy,  but  when  you  are  so  Scotch  you  remind  me 
so  terribly  of  papa." 

They  could  keep  it  up  no  longer,  and  though  they 
kissed,  their  kisses  were  frank  and  friendly,  those  of  a 
healthy  young  man  and  woman  happy  to  find  that  they 
no  longer  need  persuade  themselves  that  they  love  each 
other.  Selina  was  already  so  like  her  mother  and  never 
could  she  be  a  figure  of  romance.  However,  Jamie's 
obstinate  curiosity  would  not  let  her  fade  away.  "I  did 
love  her,"  he  insisted.  "Ah!  but  when  I  kissed  her,  I 
loved  her  no  longer.  I  loved  the  budding  woman  in  her ; 
the  wild  rose.  Ech!  but  how  soon  she  turned  to  a  hip 
or  a  haw!  She'll  never  read  my  Burns.  How  would 
she  know  what  hirpling  is,  or  a  byke,  or  a  dowie  ?  She 


8o  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

might  ask  her  dud  of  a  father  but  he's  no  Scot.  He's 
more  English  than  the  English." — But  he  was  sad  to 
let  her  go,  sad  as  he  sailed  from  Liverpool  and  watched 
the  lights  of  the  town  go  down  into  the  sea.  "I'll  no'  be 
young  again,"  he  thought.  "I've  my  mother  to  think 
on  and  I  must  be  wary  or  Tom  will  beat  me.  I  wouldna 
like  it  if  Tom  were  to  be  the  first  to  buy  my  mother  a 
jewel,  and  poor  wee  Maggie  her  wig,  and,  fine,  if  I'm 
to  live  among  the  English  I  must  do  as  the  English  do." 
It  was  grand  to  be  in  Scotland  again,  to  talk  his  own 
language  and  clearly  and  easily  to  hear  what  others  were 
saying.  It  was  good  to  be  away  from  the  streets  and 
the  houses  and  to  come  back  to  the  hills,  to  be  driving 
over  the  moors,  to  recognise  the  shapes  of  the  earth 
and  the  places,  the  very  trees  among  which  he  had  been 
born.  Tom  had  walked  out  five  miles  to  meet  his 
brother.  Jamie  gave  a  halloo  as  he  recognised  Tom 
plodding  up  the  road.  Down  he  jumped  from  the  car- 
rier's cart  and  would  have  hugged  his  brother  but  that 
Tom  stiffly  held  out  his  hand.  Jamie  wrung  it;  "Dod, 
lad!"  he  cried,  "good  man,  Tom!  Why  you're  near  as 
tall  as  I!"— "I'll  be  taller  yet,"  said  Tom.  "But  I'm 
not  going  to  walk  back.  Have  you  the  money  to  pay 
John  Carrier  the  fare?" — "I  have  that,"  says  Jamie, 
and  up  they  got. — "How's  mother?"  says  Jamie. — "She's 
well,"  says  Tom.  "And  Maggie?" — '"She's  well,"  says 
Tom  and  not  another  word  could  Jamie  get  out  of  him. 
— "You'll  do  fine  for  Thrigsby,"  said  Jamie  after  a  long 
silence.— "Will  I  ?"— "Aye.  They're  that  fond  o'  silence 
ye  can  go  for  a  month  and  never  speak  to  a  soul,  if 
you've  a  mind  to." — "Aye.  You've  got  fine  clothes, 
Jamie." — "Dod,  you  should  see  the  clothes  that  Uncle 
Andrew  wears.  The  big  pin  in  his  tie  and  the  great 
gold  chain  like  a  ship's  cable  across  his  belly.  Liver- 


TIBBY  MTHAIL  81 


pool's  a  fine  place  and  I'd  liefer  be  there  than  Thrigsby." 
-"Would  you  so?"— "I  would." 

Tom  was  infernally  discouraging.  More  difficult 
than  ever.  He  was  shy  and  gawky;  a  boy  still;  and 
Jamie  felt  such  a  man,  coming  home,  the  first  to  have 
ventured  forth,  like  a  pioneer,  to  spy  out  the  land.  Tom 
was  taking  him  too  much  for  granted ;  Jamie  admitted 
and  was  surprised  at  the  change  in  him  and  he  expected 
surprise,  even  admiration,  in  return.  However,  he  was 
so  happy  and  felt  so  big  that  he  did  not  entertain  his 
disappointment  long,  but,  to  fend  off  his  brother's  dour- 
ness,  began  to  sing,  songs  he  had  learned  from  Mr.  Wil- 
cox,  coarse  humorous  parodies  of  the  ditties  of  the  mo- 
ment. Tom  pulled  a  longer  and  longer  face  and  was 
not  amused.  At  last  he  said :  "I'm  thinking  there  must 
be  a  deal  of  wickedness  in  Thrigsby." — '"Aye,"  said 
Jamie,  exasperated.  "There's  never  a  week  but  the 
Mayor  and  Corporation  go  home  rolling,  and  there  are 
halls  where  they  have  French  women  dancing  nightly." 
-"Is  that  so?"  asked  Tom. — "Aye,  and  the  Town  Clerk 
has  a  mistress  from  the  Malays  as  brown  as  Uncle  Shiel's 
mare,  Blayberry." — "Good  laud!"  Tom  looked  fright- 
ened. "What  like  o'  man  is  Uncle  Andrew?" — "Why, 
Tom,  when  I  think  of  it,  he's  the  spit  of  you." — "Is 
that  so?"  Tom  drew  himself  up  and  looked  down  his 
nose  and  seemed  very  pleased  with  himself.  Jamie 
laughed  and  said :  "It's  blethers  I  was  telling  you. 
They're  as  quiet  and  God-fearing  in  Thrigsby  as  in  Kirk- 
cudbright and  not  near  so  drucken.  And  it  was  not 
often  I  saw  Uncle  Andrew  and  I'm  glad  to  be  home 
again." 

They  were  within  sight  of  the  Solway  now,  chopping 
down  the  long  road.  A  clear  day,  blue  shone  the  water, 
blue  the  Cumberland  hills  beyond,  yellow  and  grey  the 


82  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

houses  and  towers  of  the  town. — "I  would  like  Thrigsby 
better,"  said  Jamie,  "if  you  could  see  yon  hills  from 
it." — "Romantical  nonsense,"  growled  Tom.  "What  do 
you  want  with  hills  if  you're  making  a  position  for  your- 
self ?" — "At  least,"  protested  Jamie,  "at  least  let  me  be 
glad  to  see  them  again." — "What  like,"  asked  Tom, 
"are  the  men  in  the  office?  Are  they  clever  men?" — 
"Oh,  damn  the  office!" 

The  carrier's  cart  stopped  with  a  creak  and  a  jolt  at 
the  inn  and  down  the  brothers  got.  Jamie  felt  bigger 
than  ever.  The  town  had  shrunk  so:  the  streets  were 
so  short  and  from  nearly  all  either  the  sea  or  the  green 
country  could  be  seen.  And  there  was  hardly  a  face 
he  did  not  know,  hardly  a  face  that  did  not  light  up  with 
interest  to  see  him,  so  fine  in  his  English  clothes. — "You 
go  on,  Tom,  and  tell  them  I'm  coming." — "For  why?" — 
"I've  a  mind  to  make  an  entrance." — "Like  a  damned 
play-actor?" — "I  thought  it  would  be  fine  and  exciting 
for  mother." — -"Blethers,"  cried  Tom.  "She'd  despise 
you  for  it."  Jamie  winced  and  was  humbled  and  became 
almost  afraid  of  the  meeting  with  his  mother. 

She  was  sitting  in  her  best  black  silk  and  her  finest 
mutch,  and  had  only  just  composed  herself  in  her  chair 
with  her  hands  in  her  lap.  The  curtains  of  the  window 
were  disturbed  : — "Gorm,"  thought  Jamie,  "it's  she  who's 
play-acting."  And  he  went  up  to  her  and  embraced  her. 
She  accepted  his  caress  with  dignity  but  did  not  return  it 
and  his  thoughts  flew  to  Mrs.  Leslie  and  her  almost  child- 
ish impulsiveness.  But  the  smell  of  the  peat  fire  was  so 
good,  there  was  such  a  splendid  display  of  Scots  dainties 
on  the  table;  it  was  the  home  he  had  been  longing  for; 
the  furniture  he  had  known  all  his  life;  his  father's 
portrait  hanging  above  the  chimney-piece;  the  family 
Bible  in  the  window;  nothing  in  all  his  time  away  had 


TIBBY  M'PHAIL  83 


been  one  half  so  pleasant.  They  might  be  swelling  trade 
in  England,  but  had  they  such  homes?  Could  there  be 
such  honest  poverty?  He  looked  round  with  such  pride 
and  happiness  that  his  mother  took  his  hand  and  patted 
it: — "They've  not  spoiled  you  for  us,  Jamie." — "Spoil?" 
he  cried.  "It's  we'll  spoil  them.  They're  an  ignorant 
lot,  and  sinful." — "Aye,"  said  Tom.  "Jamie  says  they're 
all  fools  in  the  office." — "Ye  should  not  be  puffed  up 
with  the  weakness  of  others,"  said  Margaret  gently. — 
"I'm  not  puffed,"  protested  Jamie,  "but  when  I  look 
round  here  I  see  what  I  have  not  seen  this  long  time  and 
I  thank  God  for  John  Knox.  And  what's  the  news?" 

"We  have  a  new  doctor,  an  Edinburgh  man,  who 
knows  some  of  these  professors  and  philosophers  Mary 
is  so  full  of.  Farquharson  the  tailor  has  written  a  book, 
printed  and  published  in  London  no  less.  There's  been 
small-pox  in  the  town  and  Dr.  M'Phail,  who  came  in  to 
help  with  it,  took  it  and  died,  poor  soul.  But  God  has 
taken  him  for  his  good  works.  I  made  a  promise  that 
I  would  take  his  poor  nameless  child  and  care  for  her." 

"Which?"  asked  Tom. 

"Who  should  it  be  but  Tibby?  The  rest  have  good 
mothers.  I  would  not  have  her  before,  but  Maggie's  old 
enough  now  and  we  needed  help  in  the  house." 

"And  will  she  come  with  us  to  Thrigsby?"  asked 
Jamie. 

"She  will.    And  that's  all  my  news." 

"Tell  me,  has  Maggie  got  her  wig  yet?" 

"She  has  not,  but  it  is  making." 

There  came  into  the  room  a  thin  shy  little  figure,  a 
girl  of  seventeen  with  a  strange  ugly  face.  She  had  a 
nose  so  jutting  and  so  rugged  that,  though  it  was  of  no 
great  size,  it  seemed  too  large  for  her  face,  and  yet 
her  chin,  long  and  pointed,  was  almost  as  self-assertive. 


84  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Yet  the  length  of  it  told  for  nothing,  so  long  was  her 
face  surmounted  with  a  round  and  also  assertive  fore- 
head. And  behind  these  remarkable  features  glimmered 
pale  shy  eyes,  full  of  the  most  timid  and  beautiful  ten- 
derness. Jamie  rose  to  his  feet  and  stood  staring  down 
at  her.  She  fixed  her  eyes  on  Margaret.  She  was 
dressed  in  a  plain  cotton  frock  that  clung  about  her  and 
showed  the  young,  strong  figure  of  her.  Her  hair  was 
cut  short  at  the  neck,  and  being  very  thick,  stuck  out 
rebelliously,  assertively,  in  protest. 

"Was  it  four  red  herrings  and  six  fresh  I  had  to  buy 
or  four  fresh  and  six  red?"  she  asked. 

"It  was  four  fresh  and  six  red,"  said  Margaret  with- 
out looking  at  her. 

"Thank  you."  As  she  turned  her  eyes  shyly  took  in 
Jamie's  tall  figure.  Her  eyes  met  his  and  she  seemed 
to  shrink  away  into  herself  and  Jamie  felt  something  go 
click  inside  him  so  that  he  was  alarmed,  and  jerked  his 
head  up,  partly  in  surprise,  partly  by  way  of  asserting 
himself.  He  had  come  to  think  he  was  familiar  with  all 
his  symptoms  in  the  presence  of  woman. 

"Was  that  Tibby?"  he  asked. 

"Aye,"  said  Tom,  "that's  Tibby.  D'ye  think  she 
tokens  the  Doctor?" 

"I  don't  know,'  replied  Jamie.  "I  don't  know  whether 
to  laugh  or  to  cry." 

"She's  no  beauty,"  said  Tom,  "that's  certain." 

"There's  no  telling,"  asserted  Jamie  loftily,  "what  a 
girl  will  be."  And  he  felt  that  he  was  defending  Tibby 
and  was  pleased  to  feel  so. 

Maggie  and  John  came  in  on  that.  Maggie  meek  and 
shy,  John  lumpish  and  boisterous.  Poor  Maggie  with 
her  bonnet  over  the  kind  of  mutch  she  had  to  wear! 


TIBBY  M'PHAIL  85 


She  flung  her  arms  round  her  brother's  neck  and  said 
he  must  promise  never,  never  to  look  at  her. — "And 
why  not?"  asked  Jamie.  "It  would  never  be  your  ap- 
pearance I  would  see,  but  the  little  Lawrie  soul  in  you." 

And  John  chanted:  "Oh!  ain't  we  a  wonderful 
familee  ?" 

Then  they  made  Jamie  tell  of  his  life  in  Thrigsby 
and  the  riches  and  power  of  it,  and  he  described  An- 
drew Keith's  great  mansion,  and  the  great  mansion  the 
Greigs  had,  and  the  carriages  and  servants,  and  what 
the  Mayor  looked  like,  and  how  enormous  the  warehouse 
was;  and  he  made  them  roar  with  laughter  with  tales 
of  Mr.  Leslie  diving  under  the  table  after  crumbs  and 
of  Mr.  Wilcox  reciting  in  the  office,  and  the  clerks 
running  and  scurrying  when  Andrew  Keith  sent  for 
them  or  came  through  the  rooms. 

"And  d'ye  have  to  be  just  one  with  them?"  asked 
Tom. 

"Aye,"  said  Jamie.  "It  takes  a  bit  to  laugh  at  their 
jokes,  but  you  get  used  to  that." 

"I  would  never  laugh  if  I  were  not  amused,"  said 
Tom. 

And  at  last  the  subject  of  Maggie's  wig  cropped  up. 
Jamie  wished  to  know  if  it  was  to  be  very  costly.  "Not," 
said  his  mother,  "so  costly  as  we  thought  it  was  going 
to  be."  Maggie  looked  nervous  and  ashamed,  and  Tom 
stole  a  glance  round  to  the  door.  "Ye  know,"  he  said, 
"Tibby  had  a  magnificent  head  of  hair  and  near  Maggie's 
colour."  Maggie  burst  into  tears:  Mrs.  Lawrie  cried: 
"Tom!"  and  Jamie  thrust  his  hands  into  his  pockets 
and  set  his  chin  as  he  always  did  when  his  emotions 
baffled  him.  He  could  not  restrain  himself.  "I'm 
danged!"  he  roared:  "I'm  danged  if  you  aren't  the 


86  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

meanest  lot!" — '"Jamie!"  cried  his  mother,  and  Maggie 
wept  and  through  her  sobs  stammered  out :  "Oh, 
Jamie!  and  Tibby  said  you  were  such  a  fine  figure  of  a 
man!" 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   DESCENT    UPON   THRIGSBY 

41 


HALF  the  holiday  was  spent  in  living  down  that  ex- 
plosion: the  other  half  in  preparing  for  the  jour- 
ney of  family  and  possessions  by  road  and  rail.  For 
three  days  the  old  policy  of  silence  was  adopted.  Tibby 
had  her  meals  with  the  family  and  Jamie,  ignored  by  the 
rest,  would  address  his  few  remarks  to  her,  receiving 
only  "Yes"  and  "No"  for  answer.  No  one  else  spoke 
to  Tibby,  who  would  keep  her  eyes  fixed  on  Margaret's 
face  in  the  pathetic  effort  to  anticipate  her  desires.  It 
was  easy  to  see  that  she  was  frightened,  and  she  was 
very  uneasy  when  at  last  the  silence  was  broken  and 
Tom  took  to  levelling  heavy  sarcasms  at  his  brother, 
whom  he  called  "the  philosopher." — "Isn't  it  called 
ethics,  the  philosophy  of  conduct  ?"— "It  is."— "There'll 
be  more  talk  of  that  in  Edinburgh  than  in  Thrigsby,  I'm 
thinking." — "No  doubt." — "Ye'll  like  us  better  when 
we've  all  been  dipped  in  Thrigsby." — "Dipped,"  retorted 
Jamie,  "is  the  word,  for  ye're  all  sheep." — '"So!"  cried 
Tom  in  a  white  fury,  "it's  sheep  now !  It  was  pigs  lang 
syne." — Then  Margaret  asserted  her  authority:  "Tom, 
be  silent."  And  Jamie  slipped  away. 

He  would  spend  his  days  with  the  dominie  or  going 
from  house  to  house,  and  shop  to  office,  hunting  up  old 
acquaintances  and  schoolmates,  or  he  would  walk  out 

87 


88  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

into  the  country  or  along  the  shore  with  the  happy  com- 
pany of  his  budding  thoughts.  One  day  he  walked  out  to 
the  kirk  which  had  been  his  father's  and  brooded  among 
the  graves  of  the  Keiths;  and  he  saw  Doctor  MThail's 
house  standing  empty  and  the  death  of  that  man 
seemed  to  bring  home  to  him  his  responsibility  for  him- 
self, for  his  own  life.  He  visited  his  Uncle  Shiel  and  they 
talked  about  the  Doctor,  what  a  man  he  had  been,  what  a 
rich  character,  filling  the  whole  countryside  with  his 
strong  generosity.  "No  wonder,"  said  Uncle  Shiel,  "the 
women  loved  him,  for  he  could  make  the  heart  in  me  as 
soft  as  the  heart  of  a  woman,  and  I'm  tough.  And  how 
did  you  find  Andrew?" — "That,"  said  Jamie,  "is  what  I 
didn't  find.  There  was  the  outside  of  the  man,  his 

great  house  and  his  business,  but  the  man  himself " 

Uncle  Shiel  chuckled:  "He  was  the  eldest  of  us  and 
mysterious  and  secret.  Losh!  I  used  to  go  in  greater 
awe  of  him  than  of  my  father,  and  your  mother  was 
just  his  slave.  I'm  only  surprised  he  has  not  done  bet- 
ter, for  he  could  make  almost  any  man  take  him  for  a 
wonder.  But  perhaps  the  English  are  not  so  easily  de- 
ceived."— -"The  English,"  replied  Jamie,  "seem  to  like 
a  man  who  can  laugh." — "Deed  then,"  said  Uncle  Shiel, 
"  'tis  a  pity  it  was  not  me  went  among  them  and  not  An- 
drew. Remember,  laddie,  that  when  you're  weary  of 
riches  and  all  that  ye  can  come  to  your  Uncle  Shiel  and 
snare  a  rabbit  and  tickle  trout  as  you  used  to  do." — "I 
might  do  worse,"  mused  Jamie,  "than  come  to  live  on 
the  farm." — "That  would  not  suit  your  mother.  She's 
ay  girding  at  me  for  being  and  staying  a  humble  man." 
It  was  growing  late  and  Jamie  had  to  put  his  best  leg 
formost  to  reach  home  before  dark.  There  was  a  mist 
and  the  sun  set  red  over  the  hills.  A  mile  or  so  out  of 
the  town  by  a  bridge  over  a  burn  he  met  Tibby.  She 


THE  DESCENT  UPON  THRIGSBY  89 

had  seen  him  coming,  turned  and  walked  swiftly  away. 
He  caught  up  with  her  crying : 

"Tibby!    Tibby  M'Phail!" 

She  turned  on  him  and  said: 

"My  name's  Tibby.     I  have  no  other." 

"I've  been  seeing  the  Doctor's  house  to-day." 

"He  was  the  best  man  that  ever  lived." 

"So  my  Uncle  Shiel  was  saying.  Have  you  been  walk- 
ing, Tibby?" 

"I  have." 

"Do  you  always  walk  this  way?" 

"I  do." 

"I  can  guess  why." 

She  made  no  answer,  only  walked  a  little  quicker. 

"I  hope  you'll  be  happy  with  us,  Tibby.  Eh!  But 
you're  a  grand  walker!" 

"I  hope  I  know  my  duty,  Mr.  James,  wherever  I  go." 

"But  I  meant — really  happy." 

She  stopped  and  said:  "Will  you  walk  on,  Mr. 
James  ?" 

He  stood  still  and  tried  in  vain  to  catch  her  glance. 

"If  I've  said  anything  to  hurt  you,  I'm  sorry.  I've 
been  sorry  ever  since " 

"Let  me  be,  Mr.  James,  and  walk  on,  please. 
They " 

"Ah!    What  have  they  done  to  you  now?" 

"Please,  please — I'll  run — I'll  run  away  if  you  will  not 
leave  me  be."  And  tears  began  to  flow  down  her  cheeks. 

"You  poor  child !"  cried  Jamie  and  he  took  her  in  his 
arms  and  kissed  her,  tenderly,  pityingly  on  the  lips.  She 
was  passive,  accepted  the  caress,  the  tenderness,  the  pity, 
and  when  he  loosed  her  stood  with  the  tears  still  flowing. 
She  would  neither  move  nor  speak.  He  could  say  noth- 
ing and  at  last  he  swept  his  hat  from  his  head,  bowed 


90  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

low  and  walked  away,  beginning  to  understand  why 
she  must  be  left  alone  and  to  feel  ashamed  of  his  strained 
relations  with  his  family.  She  must  be  left  alone  with 
her  grief  and  nothing  must  break  in  upon  it.  "If  my 
father  had  lived!"  thought  Jamie.  "The  Doctor  loved 
him,  and  mother  too.  He  was  friends  with  mother." 
And  he  found  that  all  his  rancour  had  vanished. — He 
walked  briskly  home.  In  the  street  at  the  entrance  to 
the  town  he  found  a  horseshoe.  Dandling  this  in  his 
hand,  he  burst  in  on  his  mother  crying:  "Here's  luck, 
mother.  We'll  hang  it  over  the  door  at  the  new  house." 
—"Over  the  door?"  said  she.  "Why,  Thrigsby'll  think 
us  daft." — "They're  not  such  gossips  as  they  are  here. 
Thrigsby's  not  a  place  where  everybody  knows  every- 
body. However,  if  you'd  not  have  it  over  the  door 
I'll  give  it  to  Maggie  and  she  shall  hang  it  over  her  bed, 
to  bring  a  handsome  husband  and  great. riches." — "Poor 
Maggie!"  sighed  Margaret.  "She  won't  have  much 
thought  of  husbands  with  that  head  of  hers." — "I'm 
sorry  I  was  hasty  about  that." — "Ah!  Jamie,  that  temper 
of  yours  will  be  your  ruin.  I  was  hoping  it  would  be 
gone  by  you're  a  grown  man." — He  protested :  "But  it 
wasn't  the  same,  mother.  It  was  only  that  I  cannot  thole 
injustice." — "And  that  makes  you  unjust,"  said  she. 
Her  logic  startled  and  shocked  him:  "Dod,  mother," 
he  said.  "You  are  a  one  to  turn  a  man  back  on  him- 
self.— "Aye,"  said  Margaret  calmly,  pulling  back  the 
widow's  bands  at  her  wrists,  "and  why  for  not?"  Her 
face,  her  whole  manner  was  pugnacious  and  Jamie,  smil- 
ing down  at  her,  muttered :  "You'd  make  a  bonny 
fighter,  mother." — "The  Lord  be  thanked,"  said  Mar- 
garet, "I  have  held  my  own." 

Indeed  she  looked  indomitable  with  her  wide  thin- 
lipped  mouth,  her  almost  startled-looking  alert  eyes,  her 


THE  DESCENT  UPON  THRIGSBY  91 

blunt  nose  wide  at  the  nostrils,  her  iron-grey  hair  parted 
and  neatly  smoothed  down  under  her  mutch.  Jamie 
could  remember  her  riding  miles  in  the  rain  to  fetch 
a  remote  shepherd,  who  had  become  lax,  to  the  kirk,  and 
he  thought:  "She'll  be  lost  in  Thrigsby."  He  said 
aloud :  "Well,  I  hope  you'll  be  pleased  with  us,  mother." 
— "Indeed,"  she  said,  "I  will,"  and  that  seemed  to  settle 
it.  There  were  to  be  no  two  ways  about  it.  Jamie  felt 
constrained  to  prepare  her  for  any  possible  disappoint- 
ment and,  after  giving  her  time  to  roll  her  resolution 
round  her  tongue,  he  said:  "You'll  be  surprised  how 
quietly  things  are  in  Thrigsby.  You'll  think  the  English 
lazy,  as  I  did." — "All  the  more  reasons  for  my  sons  to 
work.  It  was  work  raised  the  Keiths  up.  The  first 
that  went  worked  often  with  their  own  hands.  My 
Aunt  Ann  did,  at  the  weaving,  with  her  own  hands, 
though  she  would  never  have  stooped  to  such  a  thing 
here  in  Scotland  where  she  was  known." — "It's  got  be- 
yond hands  now,"  said  Jamie.  "Aye,"  returned  she. 
"It's  got  to  brains  now,  and  brains  you  have."— -" As  to 
that,"  interrupted  Jamie,  "I'm  not  so  certain.  I  often 
feel  as  if  my  brains  had  holes  in  them  like  a  cullender." 
— "Aye,"  said  Margaret,  "it's  a  pity  that  Mary  has  the 
best  brains  of  the  family,  but  she  has  small  sense." — 
"Oh,  well,"  said  Jamie.  "We  are  what  we  are  and  we 
must  hold  together." 

So  the  peace  was  made.  Tom  discarded  his  heavy 
sarcasms  and  at  meals  even  Tibby  was  drawn  into  the 
conversation  and  partook  of  the  general  excitement, 
which  even  in  herself  Margaret  could  not  altogether  sub- 
due, though  every  night,  by  way  of  reminding  her  chil- 
dren that  they  were  in  the  Lord's  hands,  she  read  whole 
chapters  from  the  Old  Testament  and  improvised  elo- 


92  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

quent  prayers  for  her  children  in  turn,  with  a  little  one 
thrown  in  at  the  end  for  Tibby. 

The  wee  house  was  slowly  dismantled  and  the  fur- 
niture packed  up,  all  except  the  beds  and  the  kitchen 
table  sent  away,  and  then  into  its  emptiness  the  minister 
was  brought  to  call  down  a  blessing  upon  its  departing 
inmates.  In  Thrigsby  Jamie  had  never  felt  so  near  God 
as  he  did  in  Scotland  and  the  minister's  miserable  in- 
timacy was  at  first  rather  a  shock  to  him,  but  he  quickly 
slid  back  into  the  condition  of  his  youth  when  at  every 
fervent  mention  of  the  wrath  of  the  Deity  he  shivered 
and  quailed  internally  and  felt  that  the  divine  Eye, 
Cyclopean,  was  upon  him:  and  when  the  minister  lifted 
up  his  voice  and  brayed  of  the  perils  and  snares  and  dan- 
gers lying  in  wait  for  the  voyagers  then  he  felt  that  it 
was  indeed  a  sin  to  break  up  the  wee  house  and  he 
thought  that  perhaps  they  would  have  done  better  to 
hold  by  their  honest  poverty  in  their  native  land  than 
to  pursue  the  success  of  their  kinsfolk  amongst  foreign- 
ers. He  sighed  when  the  last  Amen  went  ringing 
through  the  house  and  almost  laughed  when  Tom,  with 
his  eye  on  the  minister,  got  in  another  Amen  as  the  rest 
were  rising  from  their  knees. — "Give  the  minister  a  drop 
of  whisky,  Tom,"  said  Margaret. — "Nae,  thank  you! 
Nae,  thank  you,"  said  the  minister. — "Just  to  drink  our 
healths,"  protested  Margaret. — "A  weel!"  He  took  his 
drop.  "God's  blessing  on  the  house  and  on  the  new 
house  and  may  ye  be  appreciated  as  ye  have  been  here, 
Mrs.  Lawrie." — "I  have  been  only  too  aware  of  my 
shortcomings,"  said  Margaret. — "Might  we  all  be  that," 
responded  the  minister,  reaching  out  for  his  hat.  He 
shook  hands  all  round :  "Ye'll  be  good  God-fearing  lads 
and  a  credit  to  your  mother  and  Scotland." — "God  bless 
Scotland,"  thought  Jamie,  and  "That  I  will,"  said  Tom. 


THE  DESCENT  UPON  THRIGSBY  93 

Thus  the  journey  was  consecrated  and  on  the  mor- 
row they  all  drove  in  the  carrier's  cart  across  the  border 
over  to  Carlisle.  It  was  a  sweet,  sad  September  day  with 
a  soft  light  on  the  Cumberland  hills  as  they  drove  to- 
wards them. — "Helvellyn,  Scawfell  and  Skiddaw,"  said 
Jamie,  "one  for  Tom  and  one  for  John  and  one  for  me. 
The  three  highest  points  in  England." — "That's  right, 
Jamie,"  said  his  mother.  "Aim  at  the  highest." — "Aye," 
thought  he,  "a  sight  higher  than  she  knows."  He  turned 
to  Tibby: — '"This  is  England,  Tibby.  How  do  you  like 
it?" — "I  see  no  difference  yet,"  she  replied  and  at  that 
they  all  laughed  and  she,  thinking  they  were  laughing  at 
her,  withdrew  into  herself  and  could  not  be  induced  to 
say  another  word. 

John  had  marked  out  a  little  hog-backed  hill.  "I'm 
thinking,"  he  said,  "that  yon'll  be  high  enough  for  me, 
yet  awhile." — "It  was  in  yon  hills,"  said  Tom,  "that 
Mary  used  to  say  she  would  one  day  have  her  house.  It 
was  reading  Wordsworth  made  her  say  that.  Her  head's 
turned  with  Goethe  now,  so  maybe  it's  Germany." — 
"Good  laud !"  cried  Jamie,  exasperated  with  the  sneer  in 
his  brother's  voice.  "What's  poetry  to  do  .with  where 
you  live  or  how?  'Tis  the  living  breath  of  a  man  and  as 
free  as  air." — "Don't  wrangle,  boys,"  said  Margaret, 
"and,  Jamie,  the  Bible  is  poetry  enough  for  any  maa  es- 
pecially a  minister's  son." — Jamie  treasured  that  saying. 
It  marked  for  him  the  point  at  which  some  queer  essence 
in  himself  left  her  and  would  not  be  subdued  in  his  affec- 
tion for  her. 

At  Carlisle  they  had  some  hours  to  wait  for  the  train. 
They  visited  the  castle  and  the  cathedral  and  then  waited 
in  the  station  sitting  by  their  furniture  which  had  arrived 
safely  and  was  piled  up  on  the  platform.  They  sat  for 
nearly  an  hour  until  the  train  came  in.  None  but  Jamie 


94  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

had  seen  such  a  thing  before  though  all  had  seen  pictures 
of  locomotives.  They  gaped  and  Maggie  screamed 
through  the  roar  and  clatter  of  the  engine  :  "Oh !  Jamie ! 
I've  left  the  horseshoe  with  John  Carrier.  Oh !  I'm  that 
sorry !  Oh !  our  luck  will  be  out !" — "Havers !"  said  Tom. 
"Speak  for  yourself.  My  luck's  in  and  I'll  not  be  losing 
it  with  any  bit  of  old  iron." — 'But  Tibby  was  discovered 
to  have  a  parcel  in  her  lap  and  in  it  was  the  horseshoe. 
Maggie  clutched  it  from  her  and  never  again  relin- 
quished it. 

Jamie  and  Tom  waited  to  see  every  piece  of  furniture 
and  every  box  put  on  the  train  and  then  they  climbed  up 
into  the  bare  hutch  which  was  a  third-class  compartment. 
They  had  oatcake,  scones,  cheese,  cold  porridge  and 
whisky  with  them  and  had  several  meals  to  while  away 
the  long  hours  during  which  they  jogged  on  through  the 
closing  day.  They  were  excited  to  see  the  tall  chimneys 
and  the  gear  of  the  collieries  and  when  they  stopped  at 
Wigan  Margaret  said :  "It  was  near  here  that  the  Keiths 
had  their  first  mill." — "I  wish,"  said  Tom,  "I  had  been 
the  first.  I  would  by  now  be  the  richest  man  in  Lan- 
cashire."— 'And  Jamie  saw  Tibby  smile. 

It  was  dark  when  they  reached  Thrigsby,  near  mid- 
night when  they  entered  21  Murray  Street,  which  Andrew 
had  ordered  Mr.  Leslie  to  take  for  them. — Maggie  had 
been  saying  during  the  last  stages  of  the  journey :  "Will 
Uncle  Andrew  send  his  carriage  for  us?" — "I've  no  doubt 
he  will,"  was  Margaret's  reply.  But  there  was  no  car- 
riage and  no  one  to  meet  them.  Only  at  the  new  house 
there  were  fires  lit  and  the  beds  were  put  to  air  and  in 
Margaret's  room  were  dahlias  in  a  glass  jar.  Jamie 
guessed  that  Mrs.  Leslie  had  put  them  there,  but  he  said 
nothing  when  his  mother  said  how  nice  it  was  of  Andrew 
to  send  them.  She  was  put  out  when  she  discovered 


THE  DESCENT  UPON  THRIGSBY  95 

that  the  house  was  one  of  a  row  of  eight  and  was  over- 
looked back  and  front.  "I  hope,"  she  said,  "I  hope  we 
shall  have  nice  neighbours.  But  your  uncle  is  sure  to 
have  inquired  into  that." — "You  need  not  know  them," 
said  Jamie,  sitting  on  her  bed  after  she  had  slipped  into 
it.  "But  I  would  like,"  she  said,  "at  least  to  know  all 
about  them." — He  remembered  then  that  though  he  had 
lived  above  a  year  with  the  Leslies  he  knew  almost  noth- 
ing about  the  people  who  lived  on  either  side  of  them. 
The  family  adventure  seemed  to  him  then  rather  forlorn, 
but  he  put  a  brave  face  on  it  and  said :  "Trust  the  Law- 
ries  to  make  their  mark,  mother."  She  replied,  turning 
her  face  to  the  wall,  "I  put  my  trust  in  the  Lord."  Jamie 
realised  that  she  was  childishly  disappointed  and  suddenly 
he  felt  immeasurably  older  than  she,  and  more  responsible 
for  her  even  than  for  poor  Maggie. 


CHAPTER    X 

MAKING   PLANS 


IT  was  some  days  before  Andrew  gave  any  sign  and 
then  he  wrote  a  stiff  little  note  of  welcome  saying 
that  he  would  give  himself  the  pleasure  of  calling  on  the 
following  Saturday  afternoon.  Tom  and  John  were  hard 
at  it  making  the  house  ready  against  his  coming  and  in 
the  evenings  Jamie  took  his  coat  off  and  walked  about 
with  a  hammer  in  his  hand  and  nails  between  his  teeth. 
The  house  was  roomy,  large  enough  to  provide  a  separate 
bedroom  for  each  member  of  the  family  and  an  attic  for 
Tibby.  She  had  no  possessions  and  was  very  proud  and 
pleased  when  Jamie  gave  her  two  pictures  to  hang  on  her 
walls;  more  than  that  he  hung  them  for  her  himself.  As 
in  Scotland  they  had  had  only  one  living-room  there 
was  hardly  any  furniture  for  the  parlour.  In  the  dining- 
room  the  furniture  was  arranged  exactly  as  it  had  been 
in  the  old  house.  The  portrait  of  the  Reverend  T.  Law- 
rie  was  hung  above  the  mantelpiece  and  the  family  Bible 
was  placed  in  the  window.  In  this  room  also  the  books 
of  the  family  were  shelved,  except  for  Tom's  which  he 
insisted  on  having  in  his  bedroom. 

On  the  Saturday  Andrew  arrived  in  his  carriage  and 
pair,  and  the  neighbours'  windows  were  crowded  with 
faces  to  look  at  him.  Jamie  received  him  and  presented 
"my  brother,  Tom"  and  "my  brother,  John."  Maggie 

96 


MAKING  PLANS  97 

was  overcome  with  shyness  and  refused  to  appear.  She 
was  afraid  of  disgracing  the  family  with  her  head,  though 
her  wig  was  almost  a  masterpiece  and  only  the  closest 
scrutiny  could  detect  it.  Margaret  was  upstairs  com- 
posing her  nerves  and  her  thoughts,  for  she  meant  to 
have  it  out  with  Andrew  and  had  given  her  sons  a  hint 
that  they  must  disappear.  She  sailed  in  presently  just 
when  Andrew's  grunts  and  snorts  had  reduced  even  Tom, 
who  in  his  desire  to  make  an  impression  had  maintained 
conversation  with  an  ingenuity  and  resource  that  to  Jamie 
seemed  nothing  short  of  miraculous.  Planting  herself  in 
front  of  her  brother,  she  forced  him  to  rise  and  kiss  her. 
He  did  so  awkwardly  and  grunted  as  he  sank  into  his 
chair  again: — '"Well,  Maggie,"  he  said,  "you're  lucky 
with  your  three  fine  sons." — "Aye,"  she  said,  "they're 
Keiths  as  well  as  Lawries." — Andrew  pointed  to  Tom: 
"That's  the  Keith,"  he  said — and  Tom  gave  a  feeble 
little  grunt  in  imitation  of  his  uncle. — "You  like  your 
house?"  asked  Andrew.  "It's  a  bigger  house  than  I  had 
when  I  first  started  housekeeping." — "But  you  had  no 
family,  Andrew,"  said  Margaret."  "I  have  no  family 
now,"  replied  Andrew,  "and  yet  I  have  a  bigger  house 
than  the  Greigs."— "Ah!"  said  Jamie,  "but  that  is  for 
your  position." — 'Andrew  quelled  him  with  a  look:  "It 
is  because  I  like  a  big  house,"  he  said.  And  Jamie  almost 
pointedly  left  the  room. 

John  followed  him  in  a  moment.  Andrew  called  Tom 
as  he  moved  and  said  to  him : 

"So  you're  to  come  to  my  office?" 

"Yes  indeed,  Uncle." 

"Well,  we'll  see  what  room  can  be  made  for  you,  and 
then  you  must  make  room  for  yourself,  eh  ?" 

"Oh,  yes,  Uncle.  Is  there  any  book  on  the  trade  I 
could  read?" 


98  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"There  is  my  own  book." 

"Could  I  read  that?" 

"I'll  send  you  a  copy  with  my  autograph." 

"Oh,  thank  you,  Uncle!" 

Tom  thought  it  time  to  retire  on  that  and  went  for 
a  walk  to  ease  his  jubilation.  When  he  had  gone,  Andrew 
said : — "You've  done  well,  Margaret,  though  you  would 
have  no  help  from  us." — "It  has  been  hard,"  said  she, 
"but  I  would  do  the  same  again.  I'm  not  asking  help 
now.  I've  brought  up  my  sons  and  I'm  offering  them 
to  the  family." — Andrew  gave  something  that  sounded 
like  a  chuckle,  a  cluck  in  his  throat :  "There's  two  sides 
to  a  bargain.  They've  got  to  prove  themselves.  We  can 
get  clerks  here  as  plentiful  as  blackberries." — "They'll 
make  their  way  with  or  without  you,"  chimed  Margaret, 
settling  her  hands  in  her  lap.  "But  I  would  prefer  it  to 
be  with  you  to  keep  them  in  the  family  though  their  name 
is  Lawrie." — "They  shall  have  their  start,"  said  Andrew. 
"Jamie  shall  go  now  to  the  mills.  He  might  make  a  good 
manager.  Tom  shall  begin  under  my  own  confidential 
clerk.  And  for  the  boy  he'll  be  the  better  of  another 
year's  schooling.  There's  a  good  Grammar  School  here, 
good  and  cheap.  His  brothers  will  easily  be  able  to  af- 
ford his  fees." — '"I'm  much  obliged  to  you,  Andrew." — 
"Oh,  I'm  brotherly,  brotherly."  So  saying,  he  rose, 
kissed  her  and  walked  out,  she  calling  to  John  to  take  his 
uncle  to  his  carriage.  John  did  so.  Andrew  extended 
his  fingers.  John  did  likewise  and  their  fingers  crossed 
like  swords. — "Gee,"  said  John  as  he  walked  up  the  path 
after  the  carriage  had  driven  off:  "I've  done  for  my- 
sel'."  He  had,  and  was  glad  of  it. 

He  returned  to  Jamie  and  said :  "Well,  he's  a  disap- 
pointment."— "What  did  you  expect?"  asked  Jamie. — 
"Something  grand  and  lordly.  You  were  grand  and 


MAKING  PLANS  99 


lordly  when  you  came  back  and  I  thought  you  must  hae 
got  it  from  him." — "Oh !  Johnny,  Johnny,  a  lordly  man 
must  have  a  soul." — "I  could  see  he  made  you  miserable 
as  soon  as  he  arrived.  But  didn't  our  Tom  make  up  to 
him  fine  ?  Our  Tom'll  have  the  best  of  him  yet." 

When  Tom  returned  Margaret  informed  her  sons  of 
the  destinies  marked  out  for  them,  and  John  only  ex- 
pressed rebellion:  "School!"  he  cried.  "Have  I  come 
all  these  miles  to  go  to  school  again?" — "You're  young 
yet,"  answered  Margaret,  "and  it's  a  good  school. "- 
"But  I'll  be  living  on  you  and  my  brothers!"  cried  John, 
unable  to  express  or  indeed  to  understand  his  real  griev- 
ance, which  was  that  he  had  expected  to  walk  out  of  the 
railway  station  into  manhood. — "You  must  not  be  un- 
grateful. It  is  your  uncle's  wish,  and  after  all  you  have 
me  to  thank  that  you  are  not  now  in  an  English  charity 
school  with  yellow  legs  and  a  round  blue  bonnet  like 
Edward  VI." — "Very  well,  mother,  but  I  will  not  learn 
the  Greek  and  if  they  try  to  put  me  to  the  mathematics 
I'll  turn  on  my  doll-face.  They  won't  do  much  with 
that." — "Don't  be  a  young  fool,"  chimed  in  Tom  heavily. 
"You'll  have  to  learn  what  the  others  learn." — But  John 
was  not  to  be  squashed :  "Jamie's  eldest.  If  I  do  what 
anybody  tells  me  it'll  be  Jamie  shall  tell  it." — "It's  school 
for  a  while,  anyhow,"  said  Jamie  and  John  bowed  to 
his  decision. 

Both  Margaret  and  Tom  kept  silent  as  to  Tom's  future. 
Margaret  told  Jamie  how  his  uncle  had  said  he  would 
one  day  be  a  manager.  Jamie  was  not  elated  at  the  pro- 
posal. "The  mills  are  at  Hyde  Bridge.  If  I  was  a  man- 
ager I  would  have  to  live  there.  It's  a  dark  hole.  I 
won't  relish  going  out  there  by  train  every  morning 
neither.  I'll  have  to  be  up  early  and  back  late." — "But 
you'll  have  a  good  practical  knowledge,"  said  Tom.  "You 


ioo  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

might  even  invent  some  new  bit  of  machinery  or  a  new 
process  would  make  your  fortune  or  at  least  put  the  firm 
under  an  obligation  to  you.  That's  how  partners  are 
made.  It's  easy  to  see  that  Uncle  knows  how  quick  you 
are,  the  way  he  moves  you  about." — Jamie  smiled : 
"That's  one  way  of  looking  at  it  and  I  suppose  we  can't 
have  things  altogether  to  our  liking."  But  he  was  dis- 
appointed and  hurt.  He  had  been  buoying  himself  up 
with  the  hope  that  on  his  return  his  uncle  would  send 
for  him  and,  after  his  long  probation,  open  up  some  defi- 
nite prospect  before  him.  He  could  not  away  with  the 
feeling  that  in  being  sent  to  Hyde  Bridge  he  was  shelved. 
He  had  once  or  twice  been  to  the  mills  and  was  left  with 
the  strong  impression  that  the  work  there  was  on  a  dif- 
ferent plane.  The  men  in  that  little  office  were  of  a  dif- 
ferent class.  The  brains  of  the  concern  were  in  Thrigsby. 
The  mill  was  only  a  machine.  The  idea  of  monotonous 
day  by  day  production  repelled  him. — "The  manager  of 
a  mill,"  said  Tom,  "would  get  a  fine  salary."-  "There's 
more  than  salaries  to  be  thought  of,"  replied  Jamie.  "At 
least  that's  how  it  seems  to  me.  If  I'm  Andrew  Keith's 
nephew  I'm  not  going  to  be  his  employee.  My  blood's 
his  and  I  back  my  blood  wi'  my  brains  for  to  help  him 
in  his  work." — "Ou  aye,"  retorted  Tom,  "but  the  busi- 
ness is  his  and  he  has  a  say  in  that.  Till  you're  as  rich 
as  he  is  you're  not  as  good,  and  fine  airs  are  out  of  place." 
— "I  measure  no  man  by  his  purse,  least  of  all  my  kins- 
man," cried  Jamie. — "It's  early  days,"  said  Tom,  "to 
talk  of  measuring  men.  You  wait  until  they  let  ye. 
That'll  be  your  job  when  you're  a  manager." — "At  Hyde 
Bridge,"  said  Jamie  relapsing  into  gloom. 

Margaret  laughed  at  them  both.  "It's  soon  to  be 
putting  old  heads  on  your  young  shoulders.  Who's  to 
tell  what  will  happen?  It  is  all  in  the  Lord's  hands. 


MAKING  PLANS  101 

And  by  the  way  what  church  did  you  attend?  Presby- 
terian, I  hope." — '"There's  not  a  Presbyterian  church 
within  three  miles,  but  I  went  to  the  English  church. 
S.  James  the  Less  I  liked  the  best;  but  S.  John's  is  the 
nearest.  Mr.  Leslie  is  churchwarden  at  S.  James." — 
"Very  well  then,  we  will  try  S.  James.  Have  they  free 
seats?"  "A  few."— "I'll  stick  to  the  Scots  Kirk,"  said 
Tom,  "if  I  have  to  walk  ten  miles." 

On  the  Sunday  morning  accordingly  he  walked  three 
miles  there  and  three  miles  back,  with  a  good  stiff  dose 
of  his  native  religion  in  the  interval.  Margaret,  James, 
John  and  Maggie  went  to  S.  James  the  Less  and  there 
met  the  Leslies.  Mrs.  Leslie  fluttered  round  Margaret 
and  told  her  how  happy  she  had  been  to  have  her  big 
handsome  son  with  her,  and  Peter,  turning  himself  for 
the  moment  into  the  spokesman  of  the  Anglo- Scots  com- 
munity, delivered  a  little  speech  of  welcome.  Selina 
meanwhile  made  herself  very  pleasant  to  Maggie  and 
tried  in  vain  to  draw  her  out  of  her  shyness.  Poor  Mag- 
gie had  been  very  upset  by  the  Anglican  service,  which 
had  seemed  to  her  trivial  and  perfunctory.  Her  great- 
est pleasure  in  life  had  been  the  Sabbath  when  she  could 
quake  before  the  Lord  and  imagine  that  at  any  moment 
the  earth  might  open  and  swallow  her  up  for  her  exceed- 
ing wickedness.  The  English  performance  had  to  her 
been  hardly  more  exciting  than  an  afternoon  call.  And 
she  was  more  than  a  little  inclined  to  regard  Selina  as 
frivolous,  if  not  improper,  because  she  was  so  gaily 
dressed.  Selina  knew  that  Jamie  had  returned  and  had 
got  herself  up  in  her  best  and  brightest,  but,  with  her 
eye  on  Margaret,  hardly  permitted  herself  to  smile  at 
him.  John  stared  at  her  and  Tom,  who  had  come  to 
meet  them,  stood  dourly  looking  on  at  the  group  of  Les- 
lies and  Lawries  blocking  the  pathway  for  the  crowd  of 


102  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

stovepipe-hatted  gentlemen  and  full-skirted  ladies  as  they 
came  streaming  out  of  church — "for  all  the  world," 
thought  Tom,  who  possessed  an  inward  wit  of  his  own, 
"like  the  animals  coming  out  of  the  Ark." — Not  such  a 
bad  simile  either,  for  it  was  one  of  those  genuine  Thrigs- 
by  days  when  air  and  earth  seem  to  be  saturated  with 
water,  dirty  water  at  that,  and  its  pale  inhabitants  have 
the  wan  vacant  stare  of  fish  in  an  aquarium,  with  some- 
thing also  of  their  odd  alacrity.  Mr.  Leslie  knew  almost 
everybody  and  had  continually  to  be  taking  off  his  hat. 
— "He's  like  a  pump,"  thought  Tom.  Very  stiff  and 
straight  was  Peter  Leslie  in  his  Sunday  broadcloth  and 
he  had  the  air  of  saying  to  all  the  congregation :  "I  am 
talking  to  these  people.  They  are  to  be  known." — And 
indeed  when  at  last  the  Lawries  and  the  Leslies  parted 
Mrs.  Lawrie  was  the  object  of  a  friendly  interest.  Tom, 
lagging,  heard  whispers:  "Scotch!  Yes.  Related  to 
Keith  Bros.  &  Stevenson."— '"Really?"  "Those  boys  are 
lucky,  but  the  Scotch  do  always  fall  on  their  feet." — 
"The  girl  would  be  pretty  if  it  weren't  for  something 
rigid  about  her." — "Proud?  Oh,  well,  /  should  be  proud 
if  I  had  three  sons  like  that.  The  eldest  has  such  dignity, 
hasn't  he?" — "They  don't  look  at  me,"  thought  Tom,  and 
his  eyes  followed  Jamie's  tall  figure.  "Oh,  the  moudie- 
warps !  I  don't  wonder  Uncle  Andrew's  rich." 

Outside  the  church  gate  Selina  managed  to  catch  Jamie 
and  with  her  prettiest  smile  she  asked  Mrs.  Lawrie  if  he 
might  accompany  her  home.  She  gave  Jamie  her  Prayer 
Book  to  hold.  It  contained  a  note  which  he  extracted  and 
thrust  into  his  waistcoat  pocket.  That  also  did  not  escape 
Tom  and  his  thoughts  coincided  with  his  brother's:-— 
"Aye,  she'll  do — for  a  manager's  wife."  The  thought 
pleased  Tom  but  not  Jamie  who  was  set  in  revolt  by  it, 
both  against  Selina  and  his  apparent  destiny. — "I'm 


MAKING  PLANS  103 

hanged  if  I'll  be  a  manager,"  he  said  to  himself.  "And 
have  done  with  this  feckless  philandering.  I  am  not 
nor  will  I  be  in  love."  This  resolution  made  him  all  the 
more  polite  to  Selina  who  found  him  more  attractive 
than  ever  since  she  had  seen  how  in  church  he  had  drawn 
attention  to  himself. — '"Did  you  have  a  pleasant  holi- 
day, Mr.  Lawrie?"  she  asked.  "It  was  excited  and  dis- 
turbing," replied  Jamie,  "but  I  was  glad  to  see  Scotland 
again." — '"Is  it  very  beautibul?" — "So  beautiful  that  no 
one  can  describe  it." — She  smiled:  "Did  you — did  you 
keep  your  promise  ?" — Jamie  turned  cold  with  fear.  She 
was  dragging  him  back  into  the  foolish  past.  "I — I  did 
not,"  he  stammered.  There  were  two  girls  walking  up  the 
street  in  front  of  them.  He  was  overcome  by  the  absurdity 
of  their  outline :  little  stiff  bodies  rising  out  of  a  semicircle 
of  draperies.  Love  and — that?  He  became  suddenly 
self-conscious  and  aware  of  his  own  incongruity,  of  the 
wild  free  impulse  in  his  own  heart,  here  in  the  wet,  dull, 
greasy  street.  He  could  not  bear  it.  He  plucked  the 
note  out  of  his  waistcoat,  slipped  it  back  into  the  Prayer 
Book,  thrust  that  into  Selina's  hands,  raised  his  hat  and 
bolted.  When  he  was  out  of  sight  he  stopped.  "Losh !" 
he  said,  "what  must  she  think  of  me !" 

He  was  crest-fallen  and  ashamed  when  he  reached 
home.  He  had  a  miserable  afternoon,  for  a  number  of 
ladies  called  and  he  was  enraged  to  see  their  eyes  taking 
in  the  furniture  of  the  dining-room  and  his  mother's  rai- 
ment and  Maggie's  wig. — ''"'Stare  on!  Stare  on!"  he 
raged.  "We're  like  any  other  folk.  Aye,  that's  my  father 
over  the  chimney-piece  and  he  was  a  good  man  though 
he  was  never  in  any  city  but  Edinburgh." — "Yes,"  he 
heard  his  mother's  voice  saying,  "yes,  I  think  we  are 
going  to  like  Thrigsby,  though  we  are  hardly  strangers 
to  it  for  we  have  had  relations  here  for  generations  now." 


104  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Or  Tom  booming:  "A  man's  place  is  in  the  city  now. 
Only  a  clod  would  till  the  soil."— (O !  Uncle  Shiel !  Uncle 
Shiel!) — And  the  women's  tongues  were  as  busy  as  their 
eyes.  They  told  Margaret  where  to  get  the  best  cakes, 
the  best  clothes,  the  best  coffee,  the  best  wine,  the  best 
shoes.  They  recommended  butchers,  bakers  and  milk- 
men.— Why  should  they  not  ?  Perhaps  even  Jamie  would 
not  have  minded  if  he  had  not  made  such  a  fool  of  him- 
self with  Selina.  Margaret  was  happy  and  contented. 
She  was  led  on  to  talk  of  her  husband  and  her  long 
widowhood,  though  not  of  her  poverty, — that  was  for 
ever  interred.  And  Tom  induced  the  ladies  to  talk  of 
their  husbands  so  that  he  might  gauge  what  manner  of 
society  they  had  come  among — clerks,  managers,  munic- 
ipal servants. — '"They'll  do  for  a  while,"  he  thought. 

Jamie  was  increasingly  miserable  until  the  ladies  had 
gone.  He  hated  himself  for  his  reserve  and  his  inability 
to  break  it  down.  All  that  evening  he  spent  writing  to 
his  sister  Mary  with  whom  he  had  begun  a  regular  corre- 
spondence. 


CHAPTER    XI 

A  LETTER  FROM  EDINBURGH 


MARY  was  a  born  letter-writer.  She  could  be  frank, 
intimate  and  charming  on  paper  as  she  could  not 
be  in  actual  relations  in  which  she  always  acquiesced  too 
much  in  her  disadvantages  of  short  stature  and  plain 
looks.  She  had  two  styles,  both  good,  one  official  and 
literary:  this  she  used  for  her  general  family  epistles: 
the  other  easy,  light  and  mocking  which  she  used  for  her 
letters  to  Jamie.  They  came  not  regularly  but  as  the 
spirit  moved  her,  generally  when  she  had  got  some  new 
light  on  the  world  as  it  shaped  itself  before  her.  Her  big 
brother,  she  knew,  had  need  of  her,  and  she  was  not 
going  to  let  distance  deprive  her  of  the  happiness  of 
supplying  it.  His  first  weeks  at  the  mill  were  desperate. 
He  thought  he  would  never  be  able  to  go  on  with  it,  but 
not  a  soul  was  allowed  so  much  as  a  glimmer  of  the  fury 
that  blew  in  him  like  a  hot  wind.  He  was  parched  and 
cracked  with  it  when  there  came  a  letter  to  say  that  she 
too  was  a  little,  ever  so  little,  unhappy. 

"It  was  grand  at  first"  (she  wrote)  "to  be  in  the 
streets  where  Sir  Walter  walked,  to  go  past  the  house 
where  he  used  to  visit  Marjorie  Fleming.  It  was  fine 
to  meet  people  who  had  seen  Sir  Walter  and  some  other 
(old)  people  who  remembered  poor  Burns.  But  now  Sir 

105 


106  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Walter  is  a  shadow  and  the  little  pride  of  the  world  fades 
before  its  great  unhappiness.  Who  can  walk  through 
the  streets  of  this  great  city  unmoved  by  the  hopeless 
misery  and  the  drunkenness  caused  by  the  misery?  You 
would  think  that  the  great  rock  standing  there  above  the 
city  would  make  for  strength,  but  I  think  sometimes  that 
no  idea,  no  symbol,  has  any  power  against  the  effect 
human  beings  have  on  each  other.  That  alarms  and  sad- 
dens me.  If  we  could  only  realise  it  and  know  some- 
thing about  it. — But,  dearie  me,  I'm  being  encouraging! 
I  should  rather  talk  of  my  pleasure  and  I  would  but  that 
it  lies  all  among  thinking  men,  and  is  therefore  just  a  little 
rarefied.  You  would  be  surprised  at  the  amount  of 
thinking  that  goes  on  in  this  town,  the  better  parts  of 
it,  that  is.  It  is  as  common  as  drunkennees  in  the  lower 
quarters!  O!  a  deal  o'  thinking!  Uncle  Andrew,  no 
not  the  Queen  of  England  couldn't  buy  it.  It  is  a 
natural  force  like  a  current  of  air  or  a  whirlpool  and  I, 
your  wee  sister,  am  caught  up  in  it.  There's  a  thing, 
though  you  may  not  know  it,  called  the  chemistry  of  the 
mind.  It  is  going  to  do  a  deal  for  the  world  without 
interfering  with  religion.  Scotland,  little  though  we  sus- 
pected it  in  the  Glen  Kens,  is  the  centre  of  the  world's 
thought.  O !  but  we  have  great  men  here.  There  have 
not  been  greater  since  the  Frenchmen  of  Paris  and  we  too 
are  to  have  our  Encyclopaedia.  England  must  and  shall 
be  educated.  Cheap  too!  I  say  we  because  I  am  to  be 
in  it.  Just  as  Diderot  made  his  Encyclopaedia  out  of  an 
English  book  so  we  are  to  make  ours  out  of  a  German 
one.  And  I  am  learning  German.  Why  not?  There 
are  Germans  on  the  throne.  It  is  a  thoroughly  respect- 
able language  and,  they  tell  me,  has  a  great  literature. 
There  are  other  poets  beside  our  Shelley  and  our  Words- 
worth and  our  little  Keats.  But  poetry  they  tell  me 


A  LETTER  FROM  EDINBURGH  107 

is  mere  intuition.  All  the  building  is  done  by  philoso- 
phers. I  don't  profess  to  understand  this  yet  and  when 
I  complain,  as  I  do  sometimes,  B.  laughs  at  me  and  asks 
how  many  people  understand  Newton  and  if  I  know 
where  the  world  would  be  without  him.  Then  I  learn 
that  it  is  something  terribly  Mathematical  and,  as  you 
know,  the  Lawries  never  were  any  good  at  arithmetic. 
It  is  very  exhilarating  but  it  makes  the  ordinary  world 
almost  intolerable  and,  after  all,  as  millions  of  people 
live  in  the  ordinary  world  it  can't  be  so  very  bad, — can 
it?  Shall  we  call  it  so-so?  Between  the  two  I  find — 
and  it  is  such  a  comfort — my  own  dear  brother.  I  like  to 
think  of  him  in  the  ordinary  world  though  he  is  not  and 
never  could  be  so-so.  Indeed,  who  can  ?  And  yet  so-so 
describes  the  sum  of  it  all. — England  seems  very  remote. 
There  are  thinking  minds  there  too  but  all  separate  and 
isolated.  Here  there  is  a  school,  another  Athens.  Alas ! 
I  know  now  that  I  shall  never  be  a  poetess.  Scotland 
is  not  to  have,  this  time,  her  Sappho.  But  you,  I  think, 
could  write.  Your  descriptions  of  Thrigsby  are  sombre 
but  not  depressing.  I  suppose,  as  you  say,  that  civilisa- 
tion is  marching  through  its  streets,  though  I  think  you 
are  a  little  hard  when  you  say  you  wish  it  would  knock 
some  of  them  down.  Surely  the  poor  people  regard 
themselves  as  better  off  in  them  or  they  would  not  go 
there.  You  know  our  philosophers  will  not  hear  of 
anything  that  goes  against  common-sense  unless  it  can 
be  mathematically  proved — like  the  earth  going  round 
the  sun,  which  is  philosophy's  one  great  smack  in  the 
eye  for  the  So-soishness  of  things.  Short  of  proof,  how- 
ever, we  have  no  right  to  interfere,  however  indignant 
we  may  be. — You  will  have  had  all  my  eloquent  descrip- 
tions of  the  beauties  of  Edinburgh  in  my  family  letters. 
In  my  letters  to  you  I  like  to  describe  only  the  Inside  of 


io8  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Me,  and  I  want  in  your  letters  the  Inside  of  You  at  least 
more  than  just  peeps  in  your  account  of  things  generally 
— I  am  glad  Mother  is  so  happy  and  so  settled  with 
plenty  of  people  to  make  a  fuss  of  her.  She  would  get 
that  anywhere. — Tom  never  writes  to  me.  John's  letters 
are  amusing,  but  yours  are  You  and  I  feel  you  growing 
into  a  wonderful  beautiful  MAN  which  I  and  the  world 
would  far  rather  have  than  all  the  philosophers  that  ever 
was.  Rare !  Only  the  world  and  women  know  how  rare, 
and  perhaps  only  the  plain  women  really  know.  Write 
soon." 

She  had  the  effect  of  bracing  Jamie  up  so  that  he  could 
more  easily  bear  the  weight  of  circumstance  and  look 
about  him  with  more  kindliness.  He  was  incapable  of 
understanding  many  of  the  ideas  with  which  she  played 
and  was  left  oddly  jealous  of  philosophers  in  general  and 
the  shadowy  figure  which  he  divined  behind  her  letters, 
though  whether  it  was  Professor  B.  or  R.  W.  or  K.  L. 
he  did  not  know.  He  inclined  to  think  it  must  be  Profes- 
sor B.  and  Mary's  growing  insistence  on  her  plainness 
made  him  furious  with  him  for  a  conceited  dolt.  Mary, 
of  all  of  them,  ought  not  to  be  unhappy.  She  must  not 
be.  His  eagerness  to  help  her,  if  she  should  need  help, 
set  him  working  with  keenness  and  vigour  so  that  he 
was  able  almost  to  conquer  his  detestation  of  the  mills. 
He  told  himself  that  it  was  absurd  and  unreasonable, 
that  without  the  mills  there  would  be  no  business,  but  he 
hated  the  long  rooms  with  the  machines  clattering  and 
the  threads  dancing,  the  shuttles  bobbing,  and  the  rows 
of  women  standing  there  for  hours  at  a  stretch,  to  gain 
so  little.  He  was  glad  to  escape  in  the  evening  and  to 
read  or  write  to  Mary  or,  if  it  was  his  turn,  to  play 
backgammon  with  his  mother.  (He  and  Tom  took  it 


A  LETTER  FROM  EDINBURGH  109 

in  turn  week  by  week.) — For  many  months  after  their 
arrival  their  existence  was  quiet,  monotonous,  unevent- 
ful, happy  and  solid.  Jamie's  imaginative  and  emotional 
life  was  away  with  Mary  in  Edinburgh. 


CHAPTER    XII 

JOHN    ASTONISHES   THE    FAMILY 


SO  absorbed  was  Jamie  in  his  effortless  acquiescence 
in  this  regular  existence  that  he  became  rather  absent- 
minded  and  hardly  noticed  what  was  happening  around 
him.  John  was  there  and  his  mother  was  there  and  Tom 
was  there  and  of  their  goings  out  and  comings  in  he 
knew  nothing  at  all.  Tibby  woke  him  up  in  the  morn- 
ing and  had  his  breakfast  ready.  This  he  gulped  down 
and  then  rushed  off  to  catch  the  train  before  the  others 
were  stirring.  John  had  home  work  to  do  in  the  eve- 
nings and  Tom  would  often  bring  a  ledger  back  with 
him  and  sit  at  work  on  it.  Margaret  had  the  tale  of  the 
day's  doings  but  she  was  never  able  to  make  it  interest- 
ing. It  was  almost  as  though  the  world  outside  Keith 
and  Lawrie  could  not  justify  its  existence  and  because 
it  made  no  apparent  effort  to  do  so  she  bore  a  grudge 
against  it.  She  was  aggressive  in  talking  even  of  her 
friends. 

So  little  did  Jamie  notice  what  was  happening  that 
it  was  a  week  or  so  after  the  event  before  he  noticed  that 
Tibby  no  longer  had  her  meals  with  them.  He  did  not 
comment  on  her  absence  but  one  night,  having  occasion 
to  go  into  the  kitchen,  he  said : — "Why  do  you  take  your 
meals  alone,  Tibby?" — "It  was  my  wish.  It  was  not 
.  .  ." — "But  I  don't  wish  you  to  be  a  servant." — "I 

no 


JOHN  ASTONISHES  THE  FAMILY  111 

am  a  servant,  Jamie.  Who  does  the  work  of  the  house 
but  me?" — "But  it  doesn't  seem  right." — "It  is  right. 
I  asked  for  wages." — "I'm  sorry  you  did  that.  You 
had  only  to  ask  for  any  money  you  need." — "Indeed  I 
would  not  ask.  And  it  is  not  the  same  here  as  it  was  at 
home."— "How  is  it  different?"— "It  is  different.  I'm 
older  for  one  thing  and  you  are  getting  on  so  nicely,  you 
and  Mr.  Tom.  You'll  take  your  position  in  the  world 
and  you  can't  have  a  half-and-half  in  the  house." — "Your 
father  and  my  father  were  friends." — "Aye,"  she  said 
with  her  queer  wistful  humour,  "but  your  mother  and 
my  mother  were  not." — That  finished  the  argument. — 
"For  your  father's  sake,"  said  Jamie,  "I  can't  altogether 
acquiesce  in  that.  You  shall  be  a  servant  if  you  insist  on 
it,  but  you  shall  be  a  friend  to  me." — "I  will  that." — 
"Then  why  do  you  call  me  Jamie  and  my  brother  Mr. 
Tom?"— 'Tibby  smiled  :  "He  is  Mr.  Tom."— "How  much 
are  they  paying  you?" — "Six  shillings  a  week." — " 'Tis 
little." — "It's  enough.  I've  no  face  to  be  vain  of  or  to 
spend  money  on.  I  can  save." — "Indeed,"  said  Jamie. 
"I  think  you  in  Thrigsby  are  the  most  extraordinary  of 
all." — "Watch  out  for  yourself,  Jamie,"  said  she  with 
a  strange  oracular  gesture,  so  that  her  words  seemed 
almost  a  warning  or  a  prophecy. 

She  had  shaken  Jamie  out  of  his  musing  so  that  he 
was  prepared  for  the  disturbance  which  soon  came  upon 
the  household.  One  night  he  came  home  from  Hyde 
Bridge,  like  Tom,  with  a  ledger.  He  was  not  altogether 
satisfied  with  the  way  the  books  were  kept  and  he  dis- 
liked the  manager  whose  chief  assistant  he  had  become, 
mainly,  as  he  knew,  through  the  man's  obsequiousness  and 
desire  to  flatter  him  as  a  nephew  of  the  head  of  the  firm. 
— "How  you  two  boys  do  work!"  sighed  Margaret, 
thinking  she  was  not  going  to  have  her  game  of  back- 


112  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

gammon. — '"We'll  have  to  work  a  deal  harder  before 
we've  done,  the  way  competition  is  springing  up  on  all 
sides.  I'm  thinking  Uncle  Andrew  must  have  had  an 
easy  time  of  it,"  said  Tom. — "Oh,  no,"  protested  Mar- 
garet. "He  had  his  hard  work  too." 

John  had  come  home  without  books. — "No  work  to- 
night?" said  his  mother.  "You  must  learn  to  work  too. 
Look  at  your  brothers." 

"I'll  work  all  right,"  said  John.  "I've  left  school." 
He  was  very  nervous  and  in  his  effort  to  put  a  bold 
front  on  it  became  rather  impudent  in  tone. 

"Left  school?"  cried  Tom. 

"Leastways  I'm  no'  going  back.  I've  found  a  post 
and  I  begin  on  Monday." 

"The  devil  you  do,"  said  Tom.  "And  where?  Has 
Uncle  Andrew  made  you  a  buyer?" 

"Uncle  Andrew's  not  the  only  door- 1  can  knock  on. 
I'm  going  to  Murdoch's  the  ironmongery  for  ten  shillings 
a  week.  Two  of  us  is  enough  for  Uncle  Andrew's  maw 
and  I'm  not  going  to  make  a  third." 

"Maybe,"  sneered  Tom,  "you  are  thinking  of  getting 
married." 

"I  am  not,"  snapped  John.  "When  I  do  go  with  a 
lassie  'twill  be  wi'  a  lady."  Tom  winced  and  John  showed 
pleasure  at  the  hit,  though  neither  Jamie  nor  Margaret 
understood  it. 

Jamie  took  the  matter  in  hand : — "But  there's  no  rea- 
son," he  said,  "why  you  should  work  yet  awhile.  You 
should  wait  till  Tom  or  I  can  help  you." — "That's  the 
reason,"  replied  John,  "that  I  want  to,  and  if  I  can  live 
without  help  I  will,  so  help  me  God."  He  was  not  at 
all  sure  of  his  ground  and,  knowing  his  Jamie,  trusted  to 
bluster.  Tom,  he  saw,  had  retired  hurt  from  the  fray. 
"I  don't  want  to  annoy  Uncle  Andrew,"  he  said,  "but  he 


JOHN  ASTONISHES  THE  FAMILY  113 

doesn't  like  me." — "How  can  you  say  such  a  thing?" 
protested  Margaret. — John  was  nettled  and  plunged :  "If 
you  want  it  straight  out,"  he  said,  "there  is  not  room  for 
me  and  Tom  in  the  same  business.  So  it's  Murdoch's 
or  America.  I  told  you  in  the  beginning  that  I  would 
not  go  to  school,  but  I  had  not  the  courage  then  to  look 
out  for  myself.  Now  I've  done  it  and  if  you  don't  like  it 
I  can  find  somewhere  else  to  live." — "But  you  don't  know 
anything  about  Murdoch's,  whether  they  are  solvent,  or 
whether  they  are  on  the  up  or  the  down,"  suggested 
Jamie. — "Murdoch's  is  all  right,"  said  Tom.  "John's 
no  fool." — "I  should  think  not,"  cried  Margaret,  out- 
raged at  the  mere  suggestion  of  such  a  thing  in  her  family. 

So  John  had  his  way,  and  Jamie,  at  heart  rather  pleased 
with  him,  gave  him  a  sovereign,  and  took  him  out  to  buy 
him  a  new  suit  of  clothes. 

These  declarations  of  independence  excited  him,  and 
made  him  envious  that  Tibby  and  John  should  both  have 
so  clear  an  idea  of  their  positions.  His  own  seemed  mud- 
dled. When  John  said  "I"  he  had  a  very  definite  notion 
of  what  he  meant,  with  none  of  the  aggressiveness  that 
was  often  so  distasteful  in  Tom.  He  was  enraged  at 
his  young  brother's  coolness  and  his  already  extensive 
knowledge  of  Thrigsby  and  its  ways. — "I'm  glad  we  came 
here,"  said  John.  "There  can't  be  another  place  in  the 
world  like  it,  for  getting  on,  I  mean.  Look  at  the  way 
it's  growing." — "In  a  way,"  replied  his  brother,  "that 
seems  to  me  to  make  it  more  difficult  if  you  haven't  a 
solid  position  in  the  beginning.  That  is  what  makes  me 
anxious  about  you." — "Oh !  I'll  be  all  right,"  said  John. 
"Never  fear.  I  wouldn't  be  stopped  from  getting  on  not 
by  fifty  uncles." — "Queer  you  should  have  that  dislike 
of  Uncle  Andrew." — '"Dod,  I  hated  him  at  sight.  He's 
so  like  mother." — That  really  shocked  Jamie.  "John!" 


114  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

—"And  Tom."— "Hush!"— "He's  not  a  bit  like  you. 
Tom  was  always  telling  me  what  I  should  do  and  I  won't 
take  it  from  him.  Thrigsby  isn't  all  Keith  Bros.  &  Ste- 
venson and  Thrigsby 's  a  big  place.  I'll  go  my  own  way 
even  if  it's  only  to  sell  matches  in  the  street." — "You 
won't  need  to  do  that  while  we've  a  roof  over  our  heads." 
— "No,  but  I  tell  you  what,  as  soon  as  I  can  I  shall  live 
in  lodgings." — "Mother  won't  like  that." — "Mother  won't 
like  what  I'm  doing  now." — "Oh!  she'll  get  over  it." — 
"I'll  be  surprised  if  she  does." — "What's  come  over 
you?" — "I  dunno:  a  sort  of  fright  I  think." — "It  seems 
unnatural  in  a  lad  like  you." — "It's  taken  me  weeks  and 
weeks  to  get  over  it." — 'I'm  glad  to  have  had  this  talk 
with  you,  Johnny.  I  feel  I  know  you  better."  John  took 
his  brother's  arm  and  said :  "You're  a  good  old  sort ; 
and  if  it  was  going  to  the  mill  I  think  I  wouldn't  mind 
being  in  the  business." — "Indeed?  What  is  it  you  mind?" 
—"Well,  it  isn't  Uncle  Andrew  and  it  isn't  Tom.  It's 
the  two  together.  I'd  hate  it  worse'n  school.  Ooh !  I'm 
glad  I  haven't  got  a  father  or  I'd  never  have  dared  to 
leave." — "I  believe  I'm  in  loco  parentis." — "You're  not  a 
bit  like  a  father  anyway." 

Now  Jamie  began  to  feel  uncomfortable,  knowing  that 
his  affections  were  running  away  with  him,  making  him 
take  his  colour  from  this  young  brother  of  his  and  see 
things  very  nearly  from  his  point  of  view.  That  was 
pleasant  but  very  much  against  his  training  which  had 
instilled  into  him  that  if  he  was  to  allow  any  point  of 
view  but  his  own,  it  must  be  the  Lord's  and  no  other. 
This  had  frequently  landed  him  in  awkward  places  and 
aggravated  in  him  that  conflict  between  self-knowledge 
and  self-conceit  in  which  so  many  Scotsmen  spend  their 
miserable  days.  Feeling  this  conflict  now  strong  in  him, 
Jamie  took  it  to  be  an  essential  part  of  his  character  and 


JOHN  ASTONISHES  THE  FAMILY  115 

not,  as  it  was,  a  condition  of  the  phase  of  development 
through  which,  without  disturbance  from  outside,  he 
was  passing.  Alarmed  at  himself,  therefore,  he  fell  back 
on  the  Lord's  point  of  view.  From  that  John  was  seen 
to  be  behaving  abominably,  flouting  his  duty  and  treat- 
ing the  respectable  with  disrespect.  Though  this  aspect 
was  distressing  it  was  easy  and  made  Jamie  feel  that 
if  he  chose  to  exert  it,  there  was  authority  on  his  side. 
However,  John,  innocently  chattering  on,  plunged  his 
brother  in  even  greater  perturbation. — "You  should,"  he 
said,  "have  a  crack  with  Tibby.  She's  sized  us  all  up. 
You're  to  be  a  great  man,  Tom's  to  be  a  rich  man,  and 
I'm  to  be  a  wanderer  on  the  face  of  the  earth." — "Tibby 
in  the  character  of  a  wise  woman  is  new  to  me,"  said 
Jamie. — John  replied:  "She  is  wise,  at  least,  she  is 
queer,  and  I  wouldn't  be  in  Murdoch's  now  but  for  her." 
—"Did  you  talk  it  over  with  her?" — "I  did  not,  but  it 
was  what  she  said." 

Jamie's  thoughts  swung  back  to  Tibby  in  her  kitchen 
insisting  on  the  definition  of  her  position  by  wages  and 
he  felt  vaguely  envious  of  her  and  yet  angry  to  be  en- 
vious. It  was  what  he  wanted  himself,  definition,  and 
he  had  but  the  most  confused  notion  of  his  position  with 
regard  to  the  persons  immediately  surrounding  him,  un- 
less he  fell  back  on  the  support  of  the  Lord,  when  they 
became  clear  but  also  reduced  and  remote.  His  affec- 
tions would  not  have  that  and  yet,  without  renouncing 
the  Lord,  he  could  not  have  it  otherwise. — O!  this  was 
too  involved.  He  encouraged  John  in  his  chatter,  and 
in  the  funny  little  swagger  which  he  was  every  moment 
more  patently  assuming,  and  visited  his  resentment  on 
Tibby. — If  John  came  to  grief  through  going  into  Mur- 
doch's, it  would  be  Tibby's  fault.  But  of  course  John 
would  not  come  to  grief.  That  fate  was  not  for  any 


ii6  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Lawrie,  or  any  Keith.  They  were  out  for  the  conquest 
of  England,  though  England  might  not  know  it,  even 
when  conquered.  That  was  the  cleverness  and  the  joke 
of  it. — "I  don't  think  you'll  wander  far,  Johnny." — 
"Not  if  I  can  get  my  way,  without/' — '"What  is  your 
way?" — "I  don't  know  yet,  but  I  can  imagine  just  get- 
ting it  and  feeling  fine." — Jamie  laughed:  "I'm  think- 
ing there'll  be  some  shocks  in  store  for  us." — John  gave 
a  whoop :  "Doesn't  this  great  city  make  you  feel  strong 
and  whirling?" — They  were  passing  down  a  street  in 
the  centre  of  Thrigsby  where  there  were  still  a  few  of 
the  old  black  and  white  timbered  houses,  some  with  pro- 
jecting upper  stories,  and  an  old  inn  that  must  once  have 
stood  in  its  own  yard  but  now  fronted  a  new  wide  street 
and  was  overshadowed  with  a  huge  warehouse. — "The 
world  must  have  been  very  charming  in  the  old  days,  but 
there  were  fewer  people  then,"  said  Jamie. 

Out  of  the  inn  came  Mr.  Wilcox  who  rushed  up  to 
Jamie  crying :  "Hoo,  my  lad !  Good  lad !  I  haven't 
seen  you  this  many  a  long  day.  They  could  not  grind 
down  your  genius  in  the  office  so  they  sent  you  to  the 
mill,  eh?  The  office  is  a  sad  place  without  you.  I  saw 
you  from  the  window :  back  view. — I  know  that  back,  I 
said  to  myself.  Such  a  back  had  John  Kemble. — And 
how  are  you?" — "I'm  very  well,"  replied  Jamie.  '  "I 
have  my  brothers  living  with  me  now.  This  is  my  brother 
John." — Mr.  Wilcox  held  out  his  hand  : — "Welcome  to 
Thrigsby,"  he  said.  "I'm  not  Mayor,  but  I  don't  mind 
speaking  for  the  rest.  Stick  to  your  brother;  he's  a 
tower  of  strength.  Fortune  could  never  resist  a  face 
like  that,  not  if  she  is  the  female  of  her  usual  portrait. 
— But  I've  news  for  you,  James,  my  lad.  Come  and 
have  a  drink  on  it." — Jamie  hesitated  on  account  of  John, 
who  said :  "Oh,  I've  been  in  public-houses  before."  So 


JOHN  ASTONISHES  THE  FAMILY  117 

they  returned  with  Mr.  Wilcox  to  the  little  low  bar- 
parlour  where  they  sat  on  old  trestles  with  their  feet 
fouling  the  sanded  floors  and  Mr.  Wilcox  ordered  ale 
for  three  from  the  stout  lady  behind  the  counter,  whom 
he  called  Aunty. — "Well,"  said  Jamie,  "what's  your 
news?" — Mr.  Wilcox  burst  out  in  a  torrent  of  words, 
speaking  so  fast  that  at  first  his  hearers  could  make 
nothing  of  his  story:  They  gathered  however  that  he 
had  left  the  firm. — "For  ever!"  he  said.  "Not  one  spot 
of  dust  from  its  unswept  floors  remains  upon  my  boots. 
A  mistake  was  made.  Thousands  lost!  Thousands  of 
golden  sovereigns.  It  was  traced,  so  they  said,  to  our 
room.  I  asked  for  proof.  None  was  forthcoming.  'Seek 
the  responsibility  elsewhere!'  said  I.  But  would  they? 
Not  a  bit  of  it.  When  there's  trouble  in  the  office,  you 
may  have  observed  that  it  is  always  Peter  Leslie  who 
is  made  to  pay.  He's  got  a  white  face,  and  a  white  liver, 
and  a  pure  white  soul.  He's  a  broken  man.  Child- 
bearing's  the  cause  of  it. — Now  old  Andrew  knows  what 
men  in  the  office  he  can't  break,  and  he  lets  them  alone. 
He  knows  who's  broken  too,  but  he's  getting  old  and  is 
losing  his  nose  for  the  breakable.  So  this  time,  to  run 
no  risks,  it  must  be  Peter.  Poor  old  Peter!  There  he 
stood,  stiff  as  a  poker,  with  a  choke  in  his  throat  staring 
hard  at  the  wall  in  front  of  him.  He  would  not,  he  could 
not  break  down.  He  was  too  hard  hit.  Well:  he's  a 
family  man,  and  you  know  his  wife,  a  high-stepper  if 
ever  there  was  one,  and  I  say  it  is  the  duty  of  the  bachelor 
to  stand  by  the  family  man,  who  is  always  the  one  to  be 
trodden  on  if  there  is  any  treading  to  be  done,  and,  let 
me  tell  you,  there  is  a  damned  sight  too  much  of  it  in 
Thrigsby. — Well,  that  went  on  for  a  couple  of  days. 
Not  a  word  did  Peter  say:  not  a  word  passed  my  lips, 
and  you  know  what  I  am.  We  were  in  that  office  night 


u8  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

after  night  looking  for  that  mistake — an  old  one,  mark 
you,  the  effects  of  which  had  only  just  come  home  to  the 
firm.  The  general  feeling  after  a  bit  was  that  whether 
it  was  found  out  or  not  Peter  was  done  for.  I  couldn't 
stand  that.  I've  been  in  the  same  room  with  him  for 
twelve  years,  and,  damn  it,  the  man's  middle-aged  and 
has  no  thought  outside  the  firm." — "He's  a  very  religious 
man,"  put  in  Jamie. — "Yes.  And  that  makes  it  all  the 
worse  for  him.  He'd  hardly  dare  put  his  nose  inside  his 
church  if  he  lost  his  job.  I  could  not  stand  it.  If  they 
want  their  mistake,  I  said,  they  shall  have  it.  It  took 
me  two  days  and  two  nights  to  think  out  that  mistake 
and  there  it  was,  very  difficult  to  trace,  in  one  of  my 
ledgers.  Then,  I  thought,  if  I  find  it  myself  they'll  per- 
haps be  suspicious,  because  they  all  know  I'm  a  fool  at 
the  business.  So  I  fetched  in  Nosey  Tom  and  said  I'd 
been  over  and  over  the  books  until  I  couldn't  tell  my 
nose  from  the  figure  nine  and  let  him  take  them  home 
with  him.  Back  he  came  in  the  morning  as  pleased  as 
Punch  and  walked  straight  into  the  old  man's  room.  An 
hour  later  I  am  sent  for,  told  I  am  next  door  to  a  thief 
and  wholly  an  imbecile  and  unworthy  of  the  trust  which 
the  firm  had  imposed  on  me  from  the  moment  of  my  en- 
tering their  service  as  a  lad.  As  a  favour — as  a  favour! 
— I  was  given  one  month's  salary.  Thank  you  for  noth- 
ing, I  said,  I  have  my  savings  and  the  mistake,  if  re- 
corded in  my  books,  did  not  have  its  origin  there.  Old 
Andrew  roared  like  a  consumptive  cow;  you  know  what 
a  silly  voice  he  has:  and  Nosey  Tom  muttered  some- 
thing about  impudence.  And  then — then — I  did  the  best 

piece  of  acting  in  my  life.    I  crawled  back  like  this " 

In  his  fiery  enthusiasm  Mr.  Wilcox  rose,  crept  hang-dog 
to  the  door,  went  out,  came  in  again  pushing  the  door 
slowly  open.  He  had  contrived  to  expel  all  the  blood 


JOHN  ASTONISHES  THE  FAMILY  119 

from  his  face  and  looked  thin  and  shrunken.  His  hands 
trembled  and  the  handle  of  the  door  rattled  and  in  a 
dry  whisper  he  croaked:  "Peter !  Peter! — Mr.  Leslie. 
It  is  finished.  My  character  is  gone.  I  am  a  broken 
man.  This  room  will  know  me  no  more.  And  I  tell  you 
it  knocked  Peter  all  of  a  heap.  He  could  not  get  out  a 
word.  He  was  shaking  and  his  hands  were  icy  cold  and 
he  clutched  mine. — 'God  bless  you!  God  bless  you!'  he 
cried,  and  he  could  say  nothing  else  but  'God  bless  you.' ' 
— "God  bless  you,  indeed,"  cried  Jamie  who  had  been 
carried  away  with  the  story  and  the  power  of  Mr.  Wil- 
cox's  acting. — "Oh !  stow  it !"  replied  Mr.  Wilcox.  "It's 
what  I'd  been  wanting  for  the  last  five  years." — "But 
who,"  asked  John,  "was  Nosey  Tom?"  Mr.  Wilcox 
dropped  his  jaw:  "I'm  blowed,"  he  answered,  "blowed 
if  it  isn't  your  brother."  And  John  gave  a  dry  little 
chuckle,  but  Jamie,  still  seeing  the  thing  as  a  great  and 
poignant  drama,  with  Nosey  Tom  as  the  villain,  almost 
groaned:  "God  forbid!" 

Mr.  Wilcox  took  a  long  drink  at  his  ale  and  continued : 
"But  that  isn't  my  real  news.  I've  joined  the  profession, 
and  we  must  have  another  drink  on  that." — "Not  for 
John,"  said  Jamie.— "Havers !"  cried  John.  "I'll  drink 
you  under  the  table." — "That's  right,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox. 
"Don't  you  be  put  upon. — Three  more,  Aunty.  There's 
a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Beeton  from  the  best  London  theatres 
coming  down.  She's  a  Terry  on  her  father's  side. 
They're  to  have  a  stock  company  at  the  Theatre  Royal 
and  I'm  to  be  one  of  their  comedians.  Good  health! 
We  start  in  a  fortnight's  time,  and  I  was  wondering  if 
you  would  like  to  write  a  prologue." — "Surely,"  said 
Jamie,  "there  are  writers  in  Thrigsby  better  known  than 
I.  At  least,  I  mean  that  I  am  not  at  all  known,  and  be- 
sides,— the  theatre!" — "If  you  have  never  been  inside  a 


120  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

theatre,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox,  with  some  heat,  "you  have 
no  right  to  condemn  it.  That  is  what  you  pious  folk 
are  always  doing." — "I  wasn't  condemning.  I  was  only 
conscious  of  my  own  ignorance." — "About  the  only  man 
in  the  world  who  is,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox.  "However, 
think  it  over.  I'm  at  the  same  old  address.  By  the  way, 
I'm  Clarence  now,  Mr.  Clarence  Wilcox.  I  couldn't  act 
under  the  name  of  Sam,  could  I?  ...  I'm  off  to  re- 
hearsal now.  Richelieu:  not  a  laugh  in  it.  Good-bye, 
sir.  Good-bye,  young  sir ;  you  stick  to  your  brother  and 
you  won't  go  far  wrong."  He  raised  his  hat  very  high 
above  his  head,  set  it  on  again  at  an  angle,  drew  on  a  pair 
of  light  yellow  gloves  and  strode  out. 

"Well,"  said  Jamie,  "what  did  you  make  of  Mr.  Wil- 
cox?"— "I  don't  know,"  answered  John  after  a  pause. 
"There  was  a  boy  at  school  had  a  father  like  him  and 
they're  as  poor  as  church  mice."  He  made  a  face. — • 
"He's  a  noble  character,"  said  Jamie. — "Aye,  I  daresay. 
But  he'll  die  poor." — "What  difference  does  it  make 
how  you  die?" — "Eh!  Jamie!"  said  John,  "you  wouldn't 
die  poor  and  leave  a  widow  as  Mother  was  left." — But 
Jamie  was  already  off  on  thoughts  of  his  prologue,  play- 
ing with  the  forbidden  fruit.  It  would  be  a  fine  thing 
to  have  words  of  his  spoken,  as  Mr.  Wilcox  could  speak 
them,  before  an  immense  concourse  of  people.  What  a 
power  words  might  exert!  They  would  go  echoing 
through  the  hearts  of  every  man  and  woman  there.  They 
would  be  treasured,  and  bring  up  warm  grateful  thoughts 
of  the  man  who  had  written  them.  And  perhaps  one 
day,  after  the  prologue,  he  would  write  a  play — a  play 
by  a  Thrigsby  author  before  a  Thrigsby  audience. — Wil- 
cox would  act  in  it.  There  should  be  a  door  in  it:  the 
door  should  slowly  open,  upon  an  empty  room,  and  a 
man  with  a  ghastly  white  face  should  open  the  door 


JOHN  ASTONISHES  THE  FAMILY  121 

and  come  in  trembling,  trembling,  afraid  of  what  he 
would  see  there,  and  his  fear  would  grow  into  terror  as 
he  realised  the  emptiness,  and  the  emptiness  of  his  own 
soul.  Jamie  gripped  his  stick  tight  and  he  walked  very 
fast  so  that  John  could  hardly  keep  up  with  him.  His 
thoughts  raced.  "Dod,  Jamie,"  said  John.  "Think  of 
them  calling  our  Tom  Nosey !" — '"Didn't  you  think  Mr. 
Wilcox  a  very  fine  actor,  John?" — "Pooh!  what's  play- 
acting?"— And  Jamie's  thoughts  collapsed: — "Indeed," 
he  said  to  himself,  "what  is  it?" — "I  wonder,"  said  John, 
"what  they  call  Uncle  Andrew." — "I  can  tell  you  that," 
replied  Jamie  savagely,  flying  back  to  the  story  of  Peter 
Leslie.  "They  call  him  the  Scotch  turd,  and  you  can 
thank  your  lucky  stars  you've  thrown  your  bonnet  over 
the  windmills  and  gone  into  Murdoch's." 

At  home  they  found  Margaret  waiting  for  them :  her 
old  fighting  self,  roused  from  the  lethargy  and  shyness 
which  had  settled  on  her  since  their  coming  to  Thrigsby. 
She  had  on  her  bonnet  and  cloak  all  shining  with  jet 
beads  which  rattled  as  she  spoke. — "John,"  she  said,  "you 
have  defied  my  authority.  I  am  going  to  take  you  to  your 
Uncle  Andrew  to  see  what  you  have  to  say  to  him." — "I 
have  nothing  to  say  to  him." — "We  shall  see  that." — 
"And  if  I  will  not  go." — "Then  I  and  your  brothers  will 
make  you  go." — "Not  I,  Mother,"  said  Jamie. — "Jamie!" 

-"My  father,  Dr.  M'Phail  used  to  say,  was  a  gentle 
soul.  He  would  not  have  forced  any  of  us  against  our 
wills.  I  have  been  talking  to  John.  He  is  set  against 
the  office."— "Why?"— "He  has  his  reasons."— "What 
are  they?" — "I  imagine,"  said  Jamie,  "they  are  deep- 
rooted  in  his  character." — "Character!  A  child  like 
that." — "Indeed,  mother,  in  many  ways  he  is  older  than 
I  am.  He  is  certainly  less  easily  deceived,  and  he  has 
made  up  his  mind." — Margaret  made  a  show  of  surren- 


122  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

der  but  her  lips  shut  tighter  than  ever. — "At  least/'  she 
said,  "he  owes  it  to  your  uncle  to  give  him  an  explanation 
and  to  ask  him  for  a  recommendation." — "There's  no 
harm  in  that,"  replied  Jamie,  jumping  at  the  chance  of 
relieving  the  strain  and  thanking  Heaven  that  Tom  was 
out. — >"No,"  said  John,  "I  see  no  harm  in  that." — So 
Margaret  sent  him  up  to  don  his  new  clothes  and  brush 
his  hair  and  wash  his  neck.  While  he  was  gone  she  said 
to  Jamie : — "It  is  natural  that  he  should  have  an  admira- 
tion for  you  as  his  eldest  brother,  but  you  ought  not  to 
take  advantage  of  that  to  subvert  my  authority." — Jamie 
was  so  entirely  unaware  of  having  done  any  such  thing 
that  he  could  find  nothing  to  say,  nor  indeed  did  Mar- 
garet seem  to  expect  any  rejoinder.  She  added :  "It  is 
the  first  grief  my  sons  have  caused  me.  Please  God,  it 
may  be  the  last."  And  Jamie,  prickly  with  distress,  found 
uppermost  in  his  mind  the  fantastic  but  somehow  attrac- 
tive idea  that  Tibby  was  responsible  for  it  all.  He  was 
dimly  aware  of  strange  influences  in  the  house  driving 
them  on  to  the  ways  they  must  go,  and  it  was  extremely 
pleasant  to  gather  all  these  influences  up  into  one  thread 
and  to  accuse  Tibby,  mentally,  of  witchcraft.  It  gave 
her  a  characteristic  personality  and  also  prepared  his 
mind  and  spirit  for  any  astonishments  that  might  come. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

CLIBRAN    HALL 


IT  was  a  long  journey  from  Murray  Street  to  Clibran 
Hall;  a  three-stage  journey  by  omnibus  with  three 
horses.  The  day  was  cold  with  that  damp  irresistible 
chill  of  which  Thrigsby  possesses  the  peculiar  secret. 
There  was  straw  to  warm  the  feet  of  the  passengers 
and  John,  thrusting  his  feet  in  it,  tucked  his  arms  well 
up  his  sleeves  and  composed  himself  for  warmth  against 
a  fat  man  who  occupied  the  corner  under  the  lamp. 
Margaret  disdained  the  straw  and  sat  stiff  and  upright 
under  her  beaded  cape.  The  omnibus  swung  and  creaked 
and  the  flickering  light  cast  strange  shadows  on  the 
faces  of  the  travellers. — "Stiring  times  these,"  said  the 
fat  man  to  John. — "Are  they?"  replied  the  boy.  "I've 
only  just  left  school." — '"Lucky  to  be  you,"  said  the 
fat  man.  "You'll  reap  the  fruits  of  it  all."— "Will 
I?"  asked  John  politely,  not  knowing  in  the  least  what 
the  man  was  talking  about. — '"Never  heard  John  Bright 
speak?  Ah!  Better  than  a  play,  that  is.  Temperance, 
reform,  but  a  sound  Englishman." — Margaret  nudged 
John,  and  whispered: — "You  should  not  talk  to  stran- 
gers."— "It's  he's  doing  the  talking,"  whispered  John,  and 
the  fat  man  pursued  his  argument: — "With  men  like 
that,"  he  said,  "we've  no  need  of  the  violence  and  devas- 
tation they  have  in  France.  If  what  they  tell  me  is  true, 

123 


124  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

France  must  be  a  terrible  country  where  no  honest  man 
is  safe.  Now  John  Bright  he's  a  sensible  man,  and  one 
sensible  man  is  better  than  ten  re  volutions.  "--The  word 
revolution  frightened  Margaret  and  she  said:  "Don't 
listen  to  him,  John." — "How  can  I  help  it,"  muttered  he, 
"with  him  talking  so  near  my  ear?" — "London,"  contin- 
ued the  fat  man,  "has  got  to  heed  what  we  say  in  the 
North.  We're  the  backbone  of  the  country  and  entitled 
to  a  voice.  We're  the  brains  of  the  country  and  Lon- 
don's the  belly.  Look  at  the  map  if  it  isn't  so.  England's 
narrow  at  the  top  and  broad  at  the  bottom,  the  bum  I 
might  say,  to  put  it  bluntly.  Where  are  the  brains  ?  At 
the  top.  But  you  should  hear  John  Bright.  He's  speak- 
ing to-morrow." — "Where?"  asked  John. — "At  the  Coal 
Exchange.  I  can  give  you  a  ticket."  He  unbuttoned  his 
enormous  overcoat  and  produced  a  bulging  pocket-book 
from  which  he  took  a  ticket.  This  he  pressed  into  John's 
hand. — "Like  a  ticket,  ma'am  ?  Better  than  a  play."  But 
Margaret  stared  frigidly  out  of  the  window. — "He's  a 
God-fearing  man,  and  none  of  your  atheists." — "Then," 
said  Margaret,  "if  he  fears  God,  why  does  he  not  put 
his  trust  in  Him  and  not  go  disturbing  the  people  ?"- 
With  considerable  emotion  the  fat  man  replied :  "To  save 
them  from  the  Godless,  madam,  and  to  save  them  from 
themselves."  As  he  uttered  this  fervent  sentiment  the 
omnibus  drew  up.  They  had  reached  the  first  stage  and 
were  to  change.  In  the  second  omnibus  the  fat  man 
again  took  up  the  corner  under  the  lamp,  but  Margaret 
kept  John  by  the  doorway  though  it  was  bitterly  cold 
there.  Two  other  men  entered  and  were  presently  drawn 
into  conversation  by  the  fat  man  who  recommended  them 
to  hear  John  Bright  and  gave  them  tickets.  John  listened 
intently  to  their  conversation  and  was  kindled  to  a  glow 
to  hear  of  riots  and  fighting  on  the  Continent,  and  dis- 


CLIBRAN  HALL  125 


turbances  in  London. — '"There'll  be  none  of  that,"  said 
the  fat  man,  "when  John  Bright  gets  his  way.  Quaker 
stock,  he  is,  the  good  English  breed,  that  showed  King 
George  in  America  what  they  were  made  of.  No  Ger- 
man nonsense  for  them.  Good,  honest,  North  country 
manufacturing  stock  he  is,  and  that's  the  stock  the  coun- 
try's got  to  look  to." — "Cobden's  my  man,"  said  one  of 
the  others  and  they  fell  to  a  furious  discussion  of  the 
merits  of  the  two  men. — "The  way  I  look  at  it  is  this," 
said  one  of  the  controversialists.  "We're  making  all  this 
trade.  Government  won't  help  us,  that's  certain." — "We 
don't  want  Government  help,"  said  the  fat  man. — "No, 
all  we  want  is  not  to  be  hampered  by  the  Government. 
If  these  men  won't  see  reason,  we  must  have  our  own 
men  in." — John  began  to  think:  "I'll  be  a  Parliament 
man  before  I've  done.  I'll  go  to  hear  John  Bright." 

Margaret  had  ceased  to  pay  any  attention  to  these 
trivial  political  matters  and  was  conning  her  address  to 
Andrew,  plotting  how  she  could  get  him  alone  without 
her  obstinate  errant  son.  Meanwhile  John  pursued  his 
ambitions :  in  ten  years  a  partner  in  Murdoch's ;  in  fifteen 
married  to  a  wife,  with  money,  perhaps  Miss  Murdoch: 
in  twenty  a  Parliament  man,  and  later  Lord  Carsphairn. 
— "Don't  forget,"  said  the  fat  man,  "John  Bright  speaks 
in  the  Coal  Exchange." — "I'll  not  forget,"  said  John. 
"My  name's  John  too." — "John  what?"  asked  the  fat 
man. — "John  Lawrie." — "That's  a  good  name.  Make  it 
Honest  John."— -"John  Lawrie,  M.P.,"  thought  John, 
catching  sight  of  his  face  in  the  window  of  the  omnibus. 
As  mirrored  there  it  was  rather  interesting:  a  large 
white  brow,  great  melancholy  eyes  and  a  little  sensitive 
mouth  and  chin. — "Has  John  Bright  got  a  beard?" 
thought  John,  and,  unknown  to  himself,  he  thought  aloud. 
— "Put  those  wicked  thoughts  from  your  head,"  said 


126  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Margaret.  "John  Bright  is  an  agitator  and  a  disturber 
of  the  Queen's  peace." — "I  don't  suppose,"  said  John 
with  a  thrilling  flash  of  wit  and  insight,  "I  don't  suppose 
the  Queen  has  ever  heard  of  him." — "The  Queen,"  re- 
plied Margaret,  "is  the  best  of  women  and  hears  of 
everything." — "She  eats  chicken-bones  with  her  fingers," 
said  John,  "and  her  real  name  is  Mrs.  Guelph." — Mar- 
garet would  have  protested  against  such  light  disloyalty 
but  that  they  had  come  to  the  second  stage  and  must  de- 
scend. The  fat  man  got  out  also,  once  more  reminded 
John  of  his  undertaking,  touched  the  brim  of  his  hat, 
and  walked  swiftly  away  with  a  lightness  of  foot  aston- 
ishing in  a  man  of  his  bulk. 

No  third  omnibus  appeared.  They  waited  nearly  half- 
an-hour  for  it  but  at  last  decided  that  they  must  walk.— 
"Perhaps,"  said  Margaret,  "your  uncle  will  send  us  back 
in  his  carriage." — "Pigs  might  fly,"  thought  John,  but  he 
said  nothing  and  walked  on  just  a  little  ahead  of  his 
mother.  When  they  were  near  Clibran  Hall  but  not  yet 
within  sight  of  it  they  began  to  hear  a  roar  of  voices, 
that  might  be  shouting  or  singing,  and  growing  louder 
and  louder.  Men,  women  and  boys  hurried  past  them 
and  soon  behind  them  they  heard  the  clatter  of  horses' 
hoofs  and  a  company  of  soldiers  went  swiftly  by,  turned 
down  a  side  road  and  disappeared  in  the  darkness. — "We 
must  hurry,"  said  Margaret,  "and  take  refuge  in  your 
uncle's  house  or  we'd  best  turn  back." — >"If  there's  any- 
thing in  the  wind,"  replied  John,  "I'll  see  what  it  is.  I'll 
see  you  safe  to  Uncle  Andrew's." — As  they  turned  the 
corner  they  came  in  sight  of  an  immense  crowd  of  people 
gathered  round  an  omnibus  from  which  the  horses  were 
taken.  On  the  top  of  this  were  three  men  who  were 
haranguing  the  crowd,  with  much  waving  of  arms  and 
swaying  of  their  bodies.  A  strange  light  was  thrown  on 


CLIBRAN  HALL  127 


the  scene  by  torches  and  the  crowd  swelled  and  heaved 
as  new  members  came  to  it.  It  was  impossible  to  hear 
what  was  said.  John  and  his  mother  were  in  the  crowd 
before  they  realised  that  it  was  outside  Clibran  Hall  and 
then  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  turn  back.  They  kept 
to  the  wall  of  the  garden,  Margaret  gazing  with  disgust 
and  scorn  at  the  crowd,  John  tingling  with  excitement 
and  straining  to  hear,  but  he  could  make  nothing  out. 
And  suddenly  the  crowd  broke  as  though  it  had  burst 
and  went  surging  up  the  garden  to  the  door  of  Clibran 
Hall.  John  caught  his  mother  in  his  arms  and  held  her 
in  front  of  him  so  that  he  carried  her  weight  and  pro- 
tected her.  They  were  borne  along  by  the  wall,  through 
the  awful  press  in  the  gateway  and  half-way  up  the  drive 
when  they  managed  to  slip  out  into  the  garden.  Stones 
began  to  fly  and  windows  crashed.  The  noise  of  that 
seemed  to  satisfy  the  crowd  more  than  their  own  for 
they  were  almost  silent,  except  for  the  grunting  and 
swearing  of  those  still  being  thrust  through  the  gate. — 
"Let  us  go  by  the  back  way,"  whispered  Margaret,  trem- 
bling in  her  son's  arms.  "In  a  while,"  answered  John. 
"I  want  to  see  this  out.  I  wonder  will  they  fire  the 
house."— "Oh!  John!  John!"— "Deed,"  said  he,  "it  would 
be  a  grand  sight." — The  crowd  began  to  cry :  "Cat  Lane ! 
Cat  Lane!  Right  of  way!  Right  of  way!"  Another 
window  went  crash,  but  by  the  sound  of  it  the  shutters 
were  closed.  One  of  the  leaders  went  up  to  the  front 
door  and  banged  upon  it  with  the  knocker. — "What  do 
they  want?"  cried  Margaret,  the  beads  on  her  bonnet  rat- 
tling.— '"I  can't  tell,"  replied  John,  "but  they're  not  doing 
all  this  for  fun." — The  hammering  at  the  door  went  on, 
until  at  last  it  was  opened.  The  crowd  was  hushed  and 
John,  caught  up  in  the  excitement,  shivered  and  then 
gasped  as  Tom  came  out  and  stood  very  white  and 


128  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

determined-looking  under  the  flickering-  light  in  the 
porch. — "Who's  yon?"  cried  a  voice.  "Where's  t'owd 
badger?" 

One  of  the  leaders  ran  up  into  the  porch  (for  the 
crowd  had  fallen  back  as  the  door  opened),  and  he  and 
Tom  talked  together.  Tom's  remarks  seemed  to  give 
satisfaction,  for  words  were  passed  down  into  the  crowd, 
which  began  at  once  to  disperse.  John  heard  a  man  say : 
"We've  won.  He'll  build."  And  another  asked :  "Aye, 
but  what'll  he  build?"  There  was  some  singing  and 
cheering  which  became  wild  hooting  as  the  clatter  of 
hoofs  was  heard  out  in  the  road  and  the  soldiers  went 
by  at  a  trot,  exchanging  chaff  and  banter  with  the  rioters. 
Soon  the  garden  was  empty.  John  was  disappointed. 
"I'd  thought,"  he  said,  "it  was  going  to  be  like  the  taking 
of  the  Bastille." — "Your  uncle,"  observed  Margaret, 
"would  be  just." — "I  wonder  why  he  sent  Tom  and 
what  Tom  was  doing  there  and  what  it  was  all  about. 
I'd  have  made  a  speech  if  I'd  been  he."  For  John's 
thoughts  were  still  running  on  John  Bright. 

Margaret  insisted  that  she  would  not  go  without  see- 
ing Andrew,  though  John  tried  to  point,  out  that  he 
would  not  want  to  see  them  after  such  an  evening's  ex- 
citement.— "He'll  be  feeling  a  strong  man,"  said  she. — 
"Dod!"  cried  John,  "he'll  be  shivering  in  his  cellar." 

They  were  ushered  into  the  library  where  they  found 
Andrew,  in  his  dressing-gown,  drinking  a  strong  whisky 
toddy,  and  Tom,  very  excited,  though  subduing  his  feel- 
ings, still  telling  what  had  happened.  Margaret  com- 
miserated her  brother  and  abused  the  rabble. — '"Obsti- 
nacy!" said  Andrew,  "stupid  obstinacy!  Where  would 
they  be  without  me,  I  should  like  to  know  ?  Who  knows 
best  what  is  good  for  them  ?  All  that  fuss  and  my  win- 
dows smashed  because  of  a  row  of  filthy  cottages  and 


CLIBRAN  HALL  129 


a  dirty  alley  leading  from  an  ash-pit  to  a  slag-heap." — 
"Of  course !"  said  Margaret,  "y°u  know  best.  You  have 
the  brains  to  see  what  they  do  not  see." — "So  I  say," 
said  her  brother.  "So  I  say  again  and  again.  Is  the 
town  to  have  a  future  or  is  it  not?  And  if  I  and  men 
like  me  do  not  look  after  its  future,  who  will  ?  The  poli- 
ticians I  suppose  and  the  Town  Council  who  think  of 
nothing  but  votes.  They  think  because  they've  lived 
in  a  place  for  twenty  years  they  must  live  there  for  ever, 
regardless  of  the  expansion  of  the  town's  industries. 
What  does  it  matter  where  they  live,  so  long  as  they  have 
factories  to  work  in?  Hum!  Hum!" — Very  savagely 
he  bobbed  his  head  down  into  his  glass. — "Drunken, 
lecherous  topers!  Look  at  the  birth-rate.  There'll  be 
no  food  for  them  to  eat  soon." — "We  were  caught  in 
the  crowd,"  said  Margaret. — "Indeed,"  grunted  Andrew, 
"and  what  brought  you  here  at  this  time  of  night?" — '"It 
is  my  boy  John.  He  has  insisted  on  leaving  school  and 
has,  against  my  will,  taken  a  post  at  Murdoch's." — An- 
drew swung  round  and  fixed  John  with  his  eye:  "Mur- 
doch's ?  Why  Murdoch's?" — "They — they  wanted  some- 
one," stuttered  John. — "Did  you  tell  them  you  were  my 
-er— connection?"— "I  did  not."— "Hum!"— "I  want 
you  to  forbid  it,  Andrew,"  said  Margaret. — Andrew  drew 
himself  up:  "If  a  young  man  dares  to  think  that  he 
knows  best  what  is  good  for  him,  let  him.  Let  him  find 
out  his  mistake."  And  that  was  all  he  would  say  in  the 
matter.  He  ignored  his  sister's  remarks  and  would  not 
even  look  at  John,  who  felt  ashamed,  miserable  and  con- 
trite. It  was  his  fault  that  his  mother  was  so  humiliated 
and  he  wanted  to  withdraw  his  resolution,  but  Andrew 
silenced  him  when  he  gasped  and  gurgled  inarticulately, 
by  tapping  with  his  foot  on  the  floor.  Tom  meanwhile 
stood  by  the  fireplace  staring  over  their  heads  at  the 


130  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

print  of  The  Industrious  Apprentice  which  hung  on  the 
wall  opposite  to  him.  John  hated  him.  Margaret  was 
silenced  at  last.  Not  a  word  was  spoken  for  twenty-three 
minutes  by  the  clock.  John  glared  at  Tom  and  said 
under  his  breath : — "The  fish !  The  clammy  glue-blooded 
fish !" — Ostentatiously  every  five  minutes  Tom  drew  from 
his  waistcoat  pocket  a  new  gold  watch,  which  when  he 
left  Murray  Street  that  morning  he  had  not  possessed. 
— "I'll  have  a  gold  watch  by  I'm  twenty-one,"  said  John 
to  himself.  "I  am  tired,  Margaret,"  said  Andrew  at 
last.  "May  I  keep  Tom  here  to-night  ?"— ''Yes,  An- 
drew," replied  she  sadly  and  with  all  the  spirit  let  out  of 
her.  "Yes,  Andrew,  you  may.  He  was  brave  with  the 
crowd,  wasn't  he?" — Tom  smiled.  "They've  spoiled  my 
evening  for  me,"  growled  Andrew  and  still  not  a  word 
did  he  speak  to  John.  Tom  nodded  good-night  to  him. 
Oh!  he  was  pleased  with  himself,  was  Tom! 

As  she  rose  to  go  Margaret  murmured  that  perhaps  the 
omnibus  would  not  be  running.  Andrew  growled  out 
that  she  could  hire  a  fly  at  his  expense — as  far  as  the 
Town  Hall,  and  he  asked  Tom  to  tell  John  to  go  and 
fetch  one. — "I'll  bring  it  to  the  gate,  mother,  if  you'll 
walk  down  there,"  said  John,  for  he  was  resolved  never 
to  enter  his  uncle's  house  again. 

The  omnibus  was  standing  derelict  in  the  road  as  he 
ran  out.  Every  pane  of  glass  in  it  was  shattered  and 
the  shafts  were  broken. — John  said  to  himself:  ''They 
should  have  brought  down  the  house  about  his  ears.  I 
would  :  indeed  I  would."  His  mortification  got  the  bet- 
ter of  him  and  his  eyes  filled  with  tears,  and  later  on  he 
was  clattering  back  in  the  fly  over  the  cobbles  and  his 
mother  said  to  him :  "See !  what  trouble  you  have  caused 
and  how  good  your  uncle  is  to  Tom.  He  has  given  him 
a  gold  watch/'  He  could  not  keep  back  his  tears  and 


CLIBRAN  HALL  131 


his  mother  consoling  him  stroked  his  hands  and  told  him 
that  all  would  come  right  in  the  end  when  he  was  a  man 
and  understood  the  world  better.  She  said:  "Tom 
will  put  things  right  with  your  uncle  and  explain  to  him 
that  you  did  not  mean  to  hurt  his  feelings,  but  were  only 
anxious  to  do  your  share  in  advancing  the  family." — The 
last  half  of  her  observation  touched  John  to  the  quick, 
explained  to  him  what  he  had  not  properly  understood 
himself,  but  his  gratitude  for  such  sympathy  was  at  once 
wiped  out  by  her  insistence  on  Andrew's  feelings  and 
ignorance  of  his  own.  He  gulped  down  his  tears  and  his 
little  chin  stiffened  and  he  stoked  up  his  personal  ambi- 
tion so  that  it  burned  away  his  desire  to  serve  the  family. 
At  the  Town  Hall  they  discharged  the  fly  and  drove 
home  in  silence  to  Murray  Street.  Neither  said  a  word 
to  Jamie  of  what  had  happened.  Jamie  looked  in  as  John 
was  getting  into  bed.  "Is  it  Murdoch's?"  he  asked. 
"Murdoch's  it  is,"  replied  John. 


CHAPTER    XIV 

GREIG    AND   ALLISON-GREIG 


MAGGIE  was  a  marvel  with  her  needle.  At  the  age 
of  twelve  she  had  astonished  Kirkcudbright  with 
her  sampler  done  in  single  stitch  on  silk  canvas,  birds, 
dogs,  flowers,  lettering  all  done  amazingly:  a  work  of 
art.  She  could  darn  linen  so  that  it  almost  needed  a 
magnify  ing-glass  to  detect  the  repair:  she  could  em- 
broider: she  could  make  lace:  she  would  work  shawls 
for  her  mother  which  it  was  hard  to  tell  from  the  best 
Indian  work :  she  would  knit  socks  and  singlets  for  her 
brothers.  She  could  draw  too  and  earned  thirty  shillings 
by  doing  fifteen  pictures  of  Jerusalem  from  different 
aspects  to  illustrate  a  lecture  given  by  a  missionary  home 
for  his  holidays  from  Madras.  She  could  also  carve  in 
wood,  and  she  was  continually  adding  to  her  accomplish- 
ments :  illuminated  lettering :  painting  on  china :  crysto- 
leum  painting:  and,  although  she  could  hardly  tell  one 
note  from  another,  she  taught  herself  to  play  hymn  tunes 
on  the  harmonium.  Her  misfortune  had  left  her  so  shy 
that  she  was  almost  inarticulate  and  only  Tom  was  able 
to  get  more  than  four  consecutive  words  out  of  her.  For 
all  that  she  had  many  friends,  possessing,  like  her  mother, 
the  Scots  talent  for  making  the  English  take  her  at  her 
own  valuation. 

The  Greigs  were  Scotch  but  they  had  been  so  easily 

132 


GREIG  AND  ALLISON-GREIG  133 

successful  and  had  married  so  well  that  they  had  never 
needed  to  employ  this  talent.  From  being  left  in  abey- 
ance it  had  withered  away  and  they  had  become  Eng- 
lish. One  Angus  Greig  had  invented  a  standard  pattern 
for  printed  calico  and  also  a  kind  of  thin  cotton  stuff  of 
which  India  demanded  millions  of  bales  yearly.  So  suc- 
cessful was  this  family  that  they  did  not  live  in  Thrigsby 
but  far  north  among  the  fells  and  lakes  of  Westmoreland. 
However,  they  were  Scotch  enough  to  be  aware  of  all 
their  relations  and  curious  about  them.  They  admitted 
Andrew's  authority  as  head  of  the  English  branch  of 
the  Clan  Keith,  though  they  were  not  altogether  in  fa- 
vour with  him  because  they  continued  to  know  the 
Allison-Greigs  after  Hubert  of  that  family  had  run 
away  with  his  (Andrew's)  wife. 

When  in  town  Mrs.  Donald  Greig  called  on  Mrs.  Nicol 
Lawrie  and  subsequently  Maggie  was  invited  to  stay  at 
Lowrigg.  The  invitation  was  accepted.  Maggie  went 
and  never  returned  except  for  an  occasional  visit.  The 
change  was  never  officially  acknowledged.  Murray  Street 
was  home  to  Maggie,  though  she  was  not  there  above  six 
weeks  in  the  year.  She  had  seen  her  chance  and  taken 
it,  and  was  governess,  housekeeper,  confidante,  religious 
adviser,  moral  sweetener,  and  buffer  against  her  husband 
to  Mrs.  Donald. 

In  Murray  Street  her  absence  was  hardly  noticed.  She 
was  always  referred  to  in  the  family  as  though  she  were 
on  the  point  of  returning  or  indeed  in  the  house.  Only 
Margaret  fidgeted  if  a  week  passed  without  a  letter  from 
her,  as  she  never  did  if  Mary  omitted  to  write.  And 
Maggie  served  the  family  by  opening  up  the  Greig  man- 
sions as  a  holiday  ground  for  her  brothers,  who  were 
glad  enough  to  escape  from  their  offices  to  the  company 
of  these  people  who  were  rich  enough  to  bear  their 


134  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

wealth  easily  and  cultured  enough  to  have  charming  peo- 
ple and  even,  occasionally,  distinguished  people  staying  in 
their  houses.  A  week  among  them  would  help  Jamie  to 
hold  his  head  up.  He  could  forget  his  mill  and  sit  drink- 
ing in  the  talk  to  which  he  dared  never  contribute,  so 
busy  was  he  turning  over  in  his  mind  the  ideas  thrown 
out.  He  was  so  happy  in  it  that  his  happiness  seemed  to 
him  contribution  enough.  The  women  were  so  sweet, 
so  elegant,  so  graceful  that  he  felt  unworthy  to  speak 
to  them  and  when  they  spoke  to  him,  as  they  must,  be- 
cause he  was  so  handsome,  he  would  blush  and  stam- 
mer. In  vain  did  Maggie  convey  to  him  the  compli- 
mentary remarks  they  made  about  him.  These  did  but 
increase  his  ecstasy  and  his  bashfulness.  A  cluster  of 
beauties  were  these  ladies,  married  and  maiden,  to  him. 
They  did  not  exist  for  him  but  rather  hovered  in  the 
enchanted  world  which  was  his  holiday.  And  slowly 
one  of  them  became,  for  him,  disengaged  from  the  group, 
Agnes  Allison-Greig,  though  he  was  hardly  sensible  of 
her  name.  She  took  shape  for  him  and  he  had  for  her 
an  adoration  so  tyrannical  over  his  emotions  that  had 
she  ever  become  aware  of  it  he  must  have  died.  He  did 
not  even  want  her  to  know  of  it;  it  was  his  ecstasy,  a 
swooning  bliss  of  which  he  dared  hardly  become  aware 
himself.  Had  he  become  aware  of  it,  had  he  admitted 
it,  the  idea  must  have  been  ridiculous  for  him,  for  this 
was  the  quality  of  his  mind  that  an  idea  in  becoming 
clear  had  but  its  moment  of  beauty  and  then  faded  into 
absurdity.  Therefore  Miss  Agnes  remained  shadowy 
to  him  and  excepted  from  the  thoughts  and  emotions 
of  his  everyday  life.  She  was  a  part  of  the  scene,  as 
essential  to  it  as  the  light  of  the  sun.  When  she  was 
away  the  lake,  the  beck,  the  fall,  the  green  and  grey 
fells  lost  half  their  beauty,  though  not  their  enchant- 


GREIG  AND  ALLISON-GREIG  135 

inent.  He  would  spend  hours  sitting  at  the  window  and 
resented  the  activities  of  the  rest  of  the  company  who 
were  always  forcing  him  to  go  riding  or  walking  or 
sailing  on  the  lake  or  to  take  part  in  a  game  of  croquet 
or  Badminton.  He  could  enjoy  those  too,  but  not  with 
the  sweet  torment  of  his  contemplation. 

After  a  week  of  such  happiness  he  could  return  to 
Thrigsby  and  the  mill  without  resentment.  The  squalor, 
the  blind  fury  of  work,  even  the  human  misery  that 
hemmed  him  in  there  seemed  to  be  almost  a  necessary 
complement  of  the  severe  dignity  of  the  fells.  His 
humour  which  in  the  northern  beauty  vanished,  came 
rushing  back  upon  him  as  soon  as  he  set  foot  in  the 
streets  of  the  dirty  town.  He  was  never  at  the  Greigs' 
with  his  brothers.  The  place  where  they  lived  became 
his  sanctuary,  the  image  of  his  most  secret  activity, 
which,  faintly  though  he  was  aware  of  it,  he  regarded 
as  peculiar  to  himself.  He  wrote  many  verses,  some  of 
which  were  published  in  The  Thrigsby  Post  over  the 
signature,  Quintus  Flumen. 

He  began  to  discover  beauty  in  Thrigsby,  more  es- 
pecially on  windy  wet  days  when  clouds  were  blown 
through  the  rising  smoke  and  the  pale  sunlight  would 
gleam  down  upon  the  tall  chimneys,  and  the  men  and 
women  in  the  streets  would  look  pinched  and  shrunken 
and  the  sprawling  mass  of  the  town  had  only  an  obscure 
and  menacing  significance.  Thrigsby  only  hurt  and  of- 
fended him  when  the  light  was  clear  and  it  stood  out 
harsh,  confident  and  blatant.  This  did  not  often  hap- 
pen, and  it  was  for  the  most  part  covered  in  the  ob- 
scurity of  its  own  creation,  an  obscurity  which,  it  seemed 
to  Jamie,  crept  into  and  darkened  the  minds  of  all  who 
lived  in  it.  He  had  gusts  of  an  aimless  passion  which 
set  him  aching  and  throbbing  and  left  him  with  a  fine 


136  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

poetic  melancholy,  which  would  so  disturb  his  mother 
that  she  would  secretly  give  him  Epsom  salts  in  the 
morning  and  she  would  talk  him  over  with  Tibby  who 
would  say:  "He's  no  ordinary  man."  Margaret's  chief 
concern  was  that,  whereas  Tom  and  John  were  always 
talking  of  their  success  in  business  and  bringing  home 
tales  of  commendation  passed  by  their  superiors,  Jamie 
never  breathed  a  word  of  what  passed  at  the  mill.  She 
was  horrified  and  scared  when  she  heard  from  Mrs. 
Leslie,  her  most  devoted  admirer,  that  Jamie  was  often 
to  be  seen  in  the  company  of  the  "wicked"  Hubert  Alli- 
son-Greig,  who  had  had  the  effrontery  several  years 
before,  after  the  death  of  Andrew  Keith's  wife,  to  re- 
turn to  Thrigsby  and  start  a  weekly  paper  in  which  he 
criticised  the  city  fathers,  the  church,  the  political 
parties,  the  architecture,  the  local  school  of  painters, 
everything  in  the  town  from  its  music  to  its  scavenging. 
—"He!  He!  Mrs.  Lawrie,"  said  Mrs.  Leslie.  "You 
can't  always  tell  a  man  by  the  company  he  keeps,  can 
you?  Birds  that  flock  together  aren't  always  of  the 
same  feather,  are  they?  Yet  I  couldn't  be  fonder  of 
James,  not  if  he  were  my  own  son." — "My  sons,"  said 
Margaret,  "would  never  do  anything  of  which  they 
were  ashamed  to  tell  me." — "And  yet  he  was  seen  with 
that  Allison-Greig." — "I  don't  believe  it,"  said  Margaret. 
Yet  she  did  believe  it,  and  locked  it  up  in  her  breast, 
and  used  it  to  account  for  Jamie's  reticence.  She  said 
nothing  to  him  but  told  herself  that  the  scoundrel  Hu- 
bert was  preying  on  her  son's  innocence  in  a  base  at- 
tempt to  worm  his  way  back  into  the  family.  In  time 
Jamie  would  see  through  this  transparent  villainy  and 
would  discard  the  schemer.  Her  dread,  however,  was 
lest  Andrew  should  hear  of  it. 

Jamie  had  no  such  thought.     He  liked  Hubert  be- 


GREIG  AND  ALLISON-GREIG  137 

cause  he  was  a  nice  man  and  amusing  and  Jamie  was 
as  incapable  of  suspecting  others  of  intrigue  as  of  deal- 
ing in  it  himself.  Mrs.  Andrew  was  dead,  her  story  was, 
for  him,  dead  with  her.  Hubert  had  a  portrait  of  her 
in  his  rooms.  Very  beautiful  she  was,  but  he  never 
spoke  of  her,  though  in  speaking  of  women  generally 
he  was  chivalrous  and  tender,  caustic  and  vitriolic  in 
his  references  to  the  virtuous  and  oppressive  husbands 
of  Thrigsby.  Besides,  he  knew  amusing  men,  good 
talkers  and  good  livers,  who  liked  their  Thrigsby  for 
the  entertainment  it  provided  and  the  strange  characters 
it  harboured,  and  never  took  it  seriously.  They  had 
admired  the  verses  of  Quintus  Flumen  and  accepted 
Jamie  on  the  strength  of  them  though  they  could  never 
get  a  word  out  of  him.  He  was  much  too  frightened 
of  them. 

Hubert's  view  was  that  a  man  must  oblige  the  world 
to  get  his  living,  but  that,  having  got  it,  it  was  his  own 
affair.  This  suited  Jamie's  feelings  until  he  found  that 
Hubert  was  an  atheist.  Then  he  was  alarmed.  God 
had  made  Scotland,  the  lakes  and  fells  of  Westmore- 
land, and  Agnes.  To  doubt  or  to  deny  God  was  offen- 
sively ungrateful.  Everything  that  was  not  Scotland, 
Westmoreland  or  Agnes  was  to  be  endured.  Hubert, 
however,  said  it  was  to  be  enjoyed  and  would  not  hear 
of  any  cleavages  between  the  human  and  the  divine. 
He  made  his  young  cousin  read  a  book  called  The  Ves- 
tiges of  Creation.  It  merely  had  the  effect  of  freezing 
his  idealism  and  made  him  so  uncomfortable  that  to 
save  himself  he  denied  science  altogether,  and,  to  his 
mother's  delight,  had  a  violent  religious  phase,  in  which 
she  imagined  him  to  be  praying  for  strength  to  resist 
temptation.  The  result  of  this  was  that  Jamie,  in  his 
agony,  begot  a  clear  idea  of  the  God  of  the  Anglican 


138  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Church,  which  met  the  usual  fate  of  his  ideas,  when 
clarified.  He  was  not  and  could  not  be  an  atheist,  that 
is,  a  sceptic,  but  he  was  now  able  to  appreciate  Hubert's 
criticisms  of  things  Thrigsbeian,  and  to  understand  that 
things  as  they  appear  are  not  always  things  as  they  are, 
which  again  are  not  necessarily  what  they  should  be. 
He  took  this  revelation  much  to  heart,  was  very  uncom- 
fortable about  it  and  puzzled  to  find  Hubert  taking  it 
so  good-humouredly.  How  could  a  man  believe  The 
Vestiges  of  Creation  and  live? — Hubert  squeezed  him 
into  an  utterance  of  this  sentiment  and  countered  with : 
"How  can  a  man  believe  in  the  Bible  and  live?  No, 
my  dear  James,  what  people  believe  is  what  they  do. 
Which  comes  first?  Believing  or  doing?  Ah!  There 
you  have  me.  And  why,  if  people  must  do  what  they 
believe,  should  I  waste  energy  in  criticising  them?  Be- 
cause I  can  tolerate  everything  except  hypocrisy.  And 
why  not  hypocrisy?  People  believe  in  that  too." — Jamie 
was  aware  of  the  circuitous  ways  of  other  people's 
minds,  but  had  not  connected  them  with  hypocrisy.  He 
was  generally  benevolent  in  his  use  of  words,  and  hypo- 
crite meant  to  him  something  so  detestable  that  he  could 
never  apply  it  to  anyone  he  knew.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  knew  very  little  of  those  with  whom  he  associated. 
Those  he  loved  he  never  dreamed  of  criticising  or  ana- 
lysing— and  he  loved  anyone  who  was  amiable  to  him. 
Those  whom  he  did  not  love  were  only  the  furniture  of 
his  world,  necessary  but  uninteresting.  No  one  had  ever 
occupied  his  thoughts  so  much  as  Hubert  did  now  and 
from  Hubert,  with  his  lively  wit,  his  deep  experience, 
his  genial  mockery,  there  came  a  current  of  feeling, 
pure  and  cold,  which  braced  Jamie's  emotions  and  made 
him  begin  to  realise  that  life  was  not  going  to  be  the 
simple  affair  he  had  imagined.  And  why  not?  It  was 


GREIG  AND  ALLISON-GREIG  139 

simple  enough  for  Tom  and  John :  or  it  seemed  so :  they 
got  what  they  wanted  or  they  wanted  what  they  got. 
Both  were  doing  well  in  their  respective  firms.  Tom 
was  already  a  buyer ;  John  was  travelling  for  Murdoch's ; 
while  he  remained  at  the  mill.  To  be  sure  he  was  mak- 
ing as  much  money  as  either,  but  why  did  he  stay  while 
they  moved  on,  and  went  from  one  kind  of  work  to 
another? — He  propounded  the  problem  to  Hubert  who 
said :  "Either  you  are  later  in  maturing'  than  they  are, 
or  you  are  fundamentally  not  interested." — "But  I  am" 
cried  Jamie,  "I  am  interested.  I  came  here  to  make  a 
career  for  myself  and  I  mean  to  succeed.  It  would 
break  my  mother's  heart  if  any  of  us  were  to  fail.  I've 
done  well  at  the  mill.  I  found  the  manager  who  was 
there  when  I  went  out  in  a  fraud.  There  was  a  fore- 
man and  a  buyer  in  it  too.  I  expected  to  be  promoted 
for  it,  but  I  was  not.  Another  manager  was  appointed 
and  I  stayed  on." — "Did  you  ask  to  be  promoted?"  said 
Hubert. — "I  did  not.  I  expected  it." — "Then  you  don't 
know  either  your  Thrigsby  or  your  Andrew.  You  can't 
expect  the  world  to  see  your  extraordinary  merit  with- 
out its  being  pointed  out  and  Andrew  certainly  won't 
perceive  your  virtues  unless  you  make  it  plain  to  him 
that  you  are  fully  aware  of  his." — "But  I  don't  lick  his 
or  any  other  man's  boots." — '"That,"  said  Hubert,  "is 
not  what  your  Andrew  requires.  What  he  wants  is  an 
admission  that  he  is  in  the  strong  position,  a  position  to 
have  his  boots  licked  by  anyone  who  is  mean  enough 
to  do  it.  Acknowledge  his  position,  my  dear  James, 
make  it  clear  to  him  that  you  have  too  much  respect 
for  yourself  to  lick  his  boots  and  he  will  regard  you  as 
worthy  of  consideration." — "I  never  thought  for  a  mo- 
ment of  his  position.  He  is  my  mother's  brother." — 
"He  is  a  rich  Englishman,"  said  Hubert,  "at  a  time  when 


140  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

it  is  generally  believed  that  a  rich  Englishman  is  the 
noblest  work  of  God." — "That,"  replied  Jamie,  "is  not 
my  belief.  My  belief  is  that  the  noblest  work  of  God 
is  a  good  woman." — "God  save  us!"  cried  Hubert. 
"You're  a  pilgrim,  a-looking  for  the  phoenix.  And  if 
you  act  on  your  belief  you  will  be  left  in  the  wilderness. 
It  is  a  faith  entirely  unsuited  to  these  islands,  where  the 
pirates  of  all  nations  come  to  settle.  You'll  walk  the 
plank,  my  James." — Jamie  felt  extremely  miserable,  as 
though  he  were  damned  from  the  beginning. — "God  help 
me,"  he  thought,  "perhaps  I'm  only  a  fool." — He  looked 
so  woebegone  that  Hubert  took  pity  on  him  and  com- 
forted him,  saying:  "No,  no,  you  know  better  than 
the  rest,  that  is  all,  even  if  you  don't  do  better  or  as 
well,  and  you  are  worth  fifty  Andrews,  for  you  have 
something  of  the  artist  in  you  and  good  can  come  of 
your  harm,  whereas  from  Andrew's  good  only  harm 
can  come.  He  is  a  trader,  a  skilful  trader,  but  because 
he  claims  authority  for  his  trade  all  his  works  are  mis- 
chievous."— Jamie's  emotions  got  the  better  of  him  and 
he  said:  "You  must  have  hated  him.;' — "Once  upon  a 
time,"  said  Hubert.  "Yes,  But  that's  all  done.  I  found 
the  marks  he  had  left  on  a  good  woman:  the  mark  of 
the  beast."  He  laughed. — "By  their  women  ye  may 
know  them.  It  all  comes  down  to  flesh  and  blood  at 
last,  though  they  have  their  Gods,  and  their  money,  and 
their  ideas." — "Ideas!"  says  Jamie.  "Do  you  scoff  at 
ideas?" — He  had  imagined  Hubert  to  be  a  philosopher. 
— "I'll  scoff  at  anything  that  feeds  the  conceit  of  a 
man,"  said  Hubert.  "Aye,  even  at  youth  and  chivalry 
if  they  be  so  debased." — 'Jamie  winced.  Hubert  was 
not  being  encouraging.  If  a  man  was  to  have  no  God, 
no  ideas,  no  money  to  speak  of,  how  was  he  to  com- 
municate with  his  fellow-men  who  believed  in  all  these 


GREIG  AND  ALLISON-GREIG  141 

things  ?  And  yet  Hubert  was  amazingly  nice,  so  human, 
so  quick  to  respond,  quicker  than  anyone  else.  And 
surely  if  that  were  so,  it  did  not  matter  much  if  his 
words  were  bewildering.  Jamie  tried  to  say  so.  He  was 
deeply  moved.  Hubert  said  :  "Have  you  no  nice  vulgar 
friends  you  can  go  with?  Religion  is  really  very  bad 
for  a  young  man.  God  is  for  people  who  are  fit  for 
Him,  like  Spinoza."— "Who?"  asked  Jamie.— "An  old 
Dutch  Jew  who  polished  lenses  and  really  did  under- 
stand the  God  of  his  tribe.  But  then  he  took  some 
trouble  about  it.  I  should  try  human  beings  if  I  were 
you,  even  if  you  are  Scotch.  That  is  not  always  in- 
curable. The  Greigs  were  cured  by  marrying  decent 
Englishwomen,  and  learning  how  to  be  lovers  and  hus- 
bands. To  be  sure  they  had  a  genius  in  the  family 
which  the  Keiths  never  had,  though  they  all  think  a 
successful  man  must  be  a  genius.  That's  young  of 
course.  A  young  man  mistakes  the  conceit  with  which 
he  is  bursting,  for  genius,  or,  at  any  rate,  overpowering 
talent.  It  takes  an  honest  man  to  acknowledge  the  mis- 
take."— Jamie  felt  his  bowels  turn  to  water.  He  had 
been  touched  on  the  raw.  Suppose  he  had  made  that 
mistake,  and  suppose  he  should  not  be  honest  enough 
to  admit  it !  To  make  sure  he  admitted  it  then  and  there 
and  mentally  recorded  the  fact  that  he  was  not  a  genius. 
Of  course  he  made  a  reservation  in  favour  of  over- 
powering talent,  which  might  or  might  not  show  itself 
in  the  future,  if — t>ut  he  was  modest  about  this — it  had 
not  already  done  so.  He  was  not  at  all  sure  that  he 
liked  Hubert  setting  the  Greigs  above  the  Keiths.  After 
all,  the  Keiths  had  come  first.  It  was  they  who  had 
opened  up  the  way  for  the  Greigs:  and  genius  was  an 
accident  for  which  no  family  was  entitled  to  take  credit 
to  itself  as  it  surely  might  for  adherence  to  virtue,  in- 


142  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

dustry  and  right-living.  No:  there  was  stuff  in  the 
Keiths,  and  then,  Hubert  knew  nothing  at  all  about 
the  Lawries,  who  had  yet  to  prove  themselves, — and 
would!  It  was  to  this  loyalty  that  Jamie  always  re- 
turned from  his  perplexities  and  with  the  hope  it  gave 
him  he  went  on  at  his  mill  confident  that  he  would  one 
day  emerge  to  astonish  both  the  Keiths  and  the  Greigs. 
By  force  of  habit  he  became  rather  attached  to  the  mill ; 
"Cat  Oil,"  as  the  hands  called  it  because  it  had  a  hole 
in  the  door  by  which  the  night  watchman's  cat  went  in 
and  out.  He  was  quite  fond  of  the  hands  too,  perpetu- 
ally astonished  at  their  good  humour,  their  easy  ways 
with  each  other,  their  stubborn  assertive  independence. 
There  were  rich  men  at  Hyde  Bridge  who  had  been  mill 
hands  in  their  youth.  Their  brothers,  their  nephews 
were  still  mill  hands,  but  they  all  met  at  chapel  on  Sun- 
days and  that  equality  was  not  forgotten  during  the 
week.  As  he  penetrated  more  deeply  into  their  lives 
Jamie  sometimes  felt  obscurely  ashamed  of  the  feeling 
of  superiority  which  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  relin- 
quish. And  he  could  not  help  contrasting  some  of  the 
mill-owners  with  his  uncle.  They  took  their  profits 
even  as  he  did,  but  they  did  not  do  it  with  the  air  of  be- 
ing divinely  inspired  so  to  do.  They  thanked  God  for 
it  on  Sundays  even  as  Andrew  did,  but  they  were  humble 
about  it,  and  not  so  sure  of  being  heard.  When  he 
thought  so  Jamie  found  the  figure  of  Hubert  looming 
large  in  his  mind,  and  thinking  it  over,  he  would  come 
to  envy  of  his  young  brother  John  who  had  defied  An- 
drew and  made  the  first  assertion  of  the  Lawriean  prin- 
ciple of  the  universe,  denying  both  the  egoism  of  the 
Keiths  and  the  luck  of  the  Greigs.  Attempting  to  de- 
fine the  Lawriean  principle  he  fumbled  about  with  the 
words — good  sense — intelligence — honesty — human  for- 


GREIG  AND  ALLISON-GREIG  143 

bearance;  but  none  of  them  satisfied  his  desire. — He  sat 
at  his  desk  in  the  mill  looking  down  into  the  dirty  yard 
where  the  lorries  were  loaded  and  unloaded.  The  light 
he  loved  was  over  the  rectangular  buildings  and  the  tall 
chimneys,  the  pale  light  coming  and  going  through  the 
heavy  torn  clouds  and  the  pall  of  smoke.  These  words 
might  do  very  well  in  business  but  beyond  that  lay  so 
much — 'life — love — warmth — order.  That  last  was  the 
word.  It  implied  something  created  and  to  his  imagina- 
tion there  appeared  two  shadowy  women :  Agnes  of  the 
lake,  and  Elizabeth  who  had  married  Andrew  Keith  and 
loved  Hubert  Allison-Greig.  Through  women,  he 
thought,  or  rather  dreamed,  for  he  was  beyond  thought, 
would  the  Lawriean  principle  be  asserted. — When  he  re- 
turned to  his  sober  senses  he  felt  that  he  had  got  the 
better  of  Tom  and  John,  of  Hubert  and  Andrew  and  was 
his  own  man  again.  As  for  the  mill — the  mill  could 
go  to  the  devil  for  all  he  cared,  if  it  should  prove  to  be 
not  the  way  to  his  desire.  He  worked  no  more  that  day 
but  wrote  a  letter  of  eight  pages  to  his  sister  Mary,  tell- 
ing her  of  the  revelation  that  had  come  upon  him. 
When  he  had  written  it  he  tore  it  up,  thinking  that 
Mary  was  living  among  clever  men  and  would  despise 
his  thoughts.  Before  he  went  home  he  had  written  a 
poem  to  Agnes,  but  it  was  rather  fleshly,  so  he  altered 
it  and  addressed  it  to  Elizabeth. 


CHAPTER  XV 

MARGARET    DISSATISFIED 


AFTER  her  defeat  at  the  hands  of  her  youngest  son 
and  her  humiliation  by  her  brother  Margaret  be- 
gan to  have  a  contempt  for  Thrigsby  and  showed  it  by 
taking  a  keener  interest  in  Mary  than  in  any  other  mem- 
ber of  her  family.  She  began  to  talk  of  "My  daughter 
in  Edinburgh — Christopher  North — she  lodges  in  the 
same  house  as  that  occupied  by  De  Quincey,  and  all  her 
friends  are  literary  men  and  so  intellectual,  though  not 
above  having  their  joke,  if  my  daughter  writes  truly." 
She  was  disappointed  and  keenly  anxious  about  Jamie. 
Tom  she  knew  was  saving  money  and  John  still  gave 
her  every  week  a  fourth  of  his  earnings,  a  few  shillings 
of  which  were  regularly  put  by  towards  that  fund  which 
should  enable  her  one  day  to  do  without  her  pension  and 
pay  back  every  penny  she  had  ever  had.  Jamie  paid 
the  bills  but  kept  secret  as  to  what  he  did  with  the  rest. 
— It  was  very  little,  but  Margaret  could  not  know  that. 
— So  she  was  unhappy,  poor  woman,  though  not  so 
very  poor  either,  because  she  liked  it.  She  wanted 
not  only  the  assertion  but  also  the  immediate  admission 
by  Thrigsby  at  large  of  the  Lawriean  principle,  but, 
unlike  her  son,  she  had  never  defined  it. — Definition 
is  the  first  stage  in  thought  and  like  most  of  the  human 
race  she  never  reached  it. — She  had  homage  in  plenty. 

144 


MARGARET  DISSATISFIED  145 

Mrs.  Leslie  called  twice  a  week  to  assure  her  that  she 
was  the  most  wonderful  of  women.  And  on  all  the 
other  days  of  the  week  there  were  other  women  to  do 
the  same.  There  were  also  male  admirers  who  might 
or  might  not  have  designs  upon  her  widowhood.  She 
never  encouraged  them  to  declare  themselves.  They 
were  of  Brighton  Brightonians  and  she  regarded  herself 
as  a  temporary  sojourner  in  that  district  until  the  fine 
house  was  made  for  her  by  her  sons,  for  she  made  no 
allowance  in  their  lives  for  marriage,  not  for  many  a 
long  year.  They  must  have  their  positions  and  then 
look  round  for  wives  worthy  to  stand  by  their  side.  A 
wit  called  her  the  Roman  Matron  of  Murray  Street, 
and  though  the  neighbours  looked  most  carefully  for 
weaknesses  in  her  they  could  find  none.  She  was  ex- 
tremely able  and  organised  the  only  thing  which  she 
could  lay  her  hands  on  outside  her  household,  namely 
the  parish  in  which  she  lived,  to  the  astounded  admira- 
tion of  the  rector  and  the  annoyance  of  his  wife.  She 
suffered  because  she  could  not  organise  the  careers  of 
her  sons,  whom  she  used  frequently  to  visit  at  their 
work,  even  making  the  train  journey  out  to  Hyde  Bridge 
once  a  month  to  see  how  Jamie  and  the  mill  were  get-. 
ting  on. — One  day  she  said :  "To  think  that  one  day, 
perhaps,  you  will  control  all  this."  Jamie  was  in  a 
despondent  mood  and  replied:  "Not  while  Uncle  An- 
drew is  alive.  He  doesn't  like  me." — "But  you  must 
make  him  like  you." — "It  is  a  little  late  for  that." — 
"He  never  sees  you,  what  a  fine  man  you  have  grown 
into.  He  has  no  opportunity  of  knowing  what  your 
work  is  like." — "He'd  misjudge  it  if  he  had." — '"I  think 
you  should  ask  to  be  moved  to  the  offices.  Tom  has 
done  so  well  there  and  made  such  useful  friends.  You 
have  no  chance  of  making  friends  here." — "That's 


146  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

true,"  sighed  Jamie  regretfully.  He  had  just  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  mill  hands  were  far  too  good 
for  him.  Margaret  pounced  on  her  chance.  "Do  you 
think  it  wise  to  see  so  much  of  Hubert  Greig?" — "He  is 
the  best  friend  I  have." — "But  you  cannot  be  a  friend 
to  him,  considering  the  injury  and  disgrace  he  has 
brought  on  your  family." — "Good  men  know  him." — • 
"They  would  not  but  for  the  fact  that  he  is  a  rich  man." 
— That  was  tactless  of  Margaret;  the  cynicism  roused 
Jamie's  obstinacy. — "He's  the  kindest  man,"  he  said, 
and  she  replied  tartly :  "A  man  who  has  lost  his  repu- 
tation would  need  to  be." — '"Is  kindness  nothing?" 
cried  he. — "Oh!  Jamie!  Is  honour  nothing?" — "And 
which,"  cried  Jamie,  "is  the  honest  man?  He  who  made 
the  woman  suffer  or  he  who  suffered  for  the  woman?" 
— >"As  to  that,"  replied  his  mother,  "there  are  no  two 
opinions  and  it  is  not  a  fit  subject  for  discussion."-  -"I'll 
stay  here,"  said  Jamie,  "and  keep  my  friend.  Out  of 
sight  is  out  of  mind,  and  my  uncle  will  give  as  little 
thought  to  me  in  the  future  as  he  has  done  in  the  past." 
— "That  is  not  the  way  to  get  on." — "Then  I'll  not  get 
on."— "Jamie!" 

A  day  or  two  later  Margaret  took  matters  in  hand  and 
went  herself  to  beard  Andrew  in  his  lair  at  the  office. 
He  kept  her  waiting  for  three-quarters  of  an  hour  after 
her  name  had  been  brought  to  him;. not  from  any  desire 
to  incommode  her  but  because  that  was  his  habit  with 
visitors,  partly  from  a  wish  to  make  them  feel  his  im- 
portance, partly  to  support  his  belief  that  from  nine 
o'clock  to  half-past  six  every  day  neither  he  nor  his 
managers  nor  his  clerks  nor  his  warehousemen  nor  any 
one  within  his  doors  ceased  for  a  moment  from  their 
labours.  So  while  Margaret  sat  in  the  waiting-room 
below  he  sat  by  his  writing-table  and  twiddled  a  white 


MARGARET  DISSATISFIED  147 

paper-knife.  At  last  he  rose  and  touched  the  bell-pull 
and  she  was  shown  up.  He  was  not  pleased  to  see  her 
and  made  no  attempt  to  pretend  that  he  was.  He  had 
heard  that  she  came  to  the  office  to  see  Tom  and  had 
been  to  the  mill  and  he  felt  very  strongly  that  a  woman's 
place  is  her  home,  and  that,  as  a  man  makes  no  attempt 
to  understand  her  work  there,  so  she  should  not  spy 
upon  him  in  his  sphere.  Andrew's  mind  was  as  full 
of  pigeon-holes  as  his  desk,  and  once  filed  he  never 
doubted  that  he  had  its  contents  rightly  placed. — He 
waved  his  hand  to  a  chair  which  Margaret  took.  Then 
he  waited  for  her  to  speak.  She  was  rather  breathless4 
and  for  the  moment  possessed  by  an  indignation  which 
she  thought  she  had,  like  a  good  Christian,  subdued,  at 
the  humiliation  he  had  put  upon  her  at  Clibran  Hall. 

At  last  she  managed  to  gasp  out : — "My  son "     He 

thought  she  was  referring  to  John,  and  answered :  "He 
had  his  choice.  Let  him  abide  by  it." — "John,"  said 
she,  "is  doing  very  well,  very  well  indeed." — "I  would 
like  to  know,"  observed  Andrew,  "where  the  building 
trade  would  be  without  us  to  give  employment." — But 
Margaret  was  not  to  be  put  off  by  generalisation. — "It 
is  Jamie,"  she  said.  "I  am  anxious  about  him." — "Ah!" 
observed  Andrew,  "I  thought  that  would  come.  He's  a 
Lawrie,  and  soft." — "My  husband,"  replied  Margaret, 
"had  something  like  genius." — "That,"  rejoined  Andrew, 
"is  an  affliction  which  we  could  well  be  spared.  There  is 
genius,  which  is  to  say  madness,  in  the  Greigs." — "I 
want  to  talk  to  you  about  Jamie." — "What  has  he  been 
doing?" — "It  is  what  he  is  not  doing.  I  hope  you  are 
satisfied  with  his  work  at  the  mill." — "The  mill  is  work- 
ing quite  satisfactorily.  He  is  doing  no  harm." — "But 
he  is  not  making  any  friends  or  establishing  any  connec- 
tions."— -"That  is  his  own  affair.  You  cannot  blame  me 


148  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

if  he  will  not  use  his  advantages.  He  is  making,  for  his 
age,  a  handsome  income."-  -''Oh,  yes." — "Then  what  is 
your  complaint?" — "He  has  not  the  opportunities  he 
ought  to  have." — "He  will  have  the  opportunities  he 
makes.  Really,  Margaret,  I  expected  more  reason  from 
you.  I  cannot  alter  the  organisation  of  my  business 
even  to  accommodate  my  nephews.  Tom  is  useful  here, 
Jamie  is  useful  there." — "It  is  a  question  of  experience.'* 
— "Pooh!  he  is  out  of  harm's  way." — I  wish  you  would 
think  it  over." — "I  have  thought  it  over." 

That  was  final.  And  once  again  Margaret  had  to 
accept  defeat.  She  took  it  rather  well  on  the  whole, 
expressed  a  wish  that  Andrew  should  come  and  see  her 
more  often. — "My  life  is  a  busy  one,"  he  said.  "You 
have  every  reason  to  be  satisfied.  Tom  at  any  rate  will 
make  a  position  for  himself.  He  is  the  one  I  know  best. 
He  is,  I  assure  you,  a  credit  to  the  family." — "But  I 
want  you  to  be  fair  to  the  others  too." — "I  am,  I  hope," 
said  Andrew,  throwing  up  his  head  and  blowing  out  his 
chest,  "a  just  man.  Jamie  wanted  steadying.  A  woman, 
a  mother  can  understand  very  little  of  a  young  man's 
needs.  You  can  take  my  word  for  it,  he  wanted  steady- 
ing. When  he  is  steadied  I  will  do  what  I  can  for  him ; 
indeed  I  will  do  all  in  my  power,  and  I  hope  he  will  be 
grateful." — "Oh!  I  am  grateful,  Andrew,"  said  Mar- 
garet. "You  must  not  think  me  ungrateful,  but  I  am 
naturally  anxious." — "Of  course,  of  course,"  said  An- 
drew and  he  fell  back  on  generalisations  and  talked  her 
out  of  the  room,  down  the  passage  and  into  the  hands  of 
Mr.  Clulow  who  showed  her  to  the  door. 

Margaret  was  surprised  at  her  own  feelings.  They 
were  as  near  disloyalty  to  the  Keiths  as  she  could  get. 
She  was  extremely  uncomfortable  and  to  relieve  herself 
visited  her  exasperation  upon  Hubert  Allison-Greig. 


MARGARET  DISSATISFIED  149 

She  told  herself  that  Andrew  was  aware  of  Jamie's  ac- 
quaintance with  that  scoundrel  and  was  therefore  quite 
properly  antagonistic.  For  some  days  she  brooded  over 
this  idea  until  she  had  persuaded  herself  that  Hubert 
was  deliberately  and  satanically  plotting  to  ruin  her 
son  in  order  yet  further  to  injure  and  despoil  Andrew. 
All  she  knew  of  the  story  was  that  Andrew  had  re- 
fused to  divorce  his  wife  and  had  made  Hubert's  exist- 
ence in  commercial  circles  in  Thrigsby  impossible. 
Hubert  had  then  gone  with  "that  woman"  to  London 
where  she  had  been  punished  for  her  sin  by  death  in 
the  birth  of  the  child  which  she  in  her  wickedness  had 
not  borne  for  Andrew.  Every  one  of  the  prejudices 
of  Margaret's  religion  and  morality  stood  on  end  and 
roused  her  almost  to  terror  of  Hubert.  He  had  come 
back  to  Thrigsby  on  purpose  to  contaminate  the  younger 
generation.  Hearing  that  Andrew  had  three  nephews 
come  to  make  their  start  in  life  he  had  descended  like 
a  wolf  upon  the  fold.  Andrew's  wife  was  not  enough 
for  him;  Andrew  had  a  sister,  a  God-fearing,  upright, 
steadfast  woman;  she  too  must  be  injured.  So,  having 
directed  Hubert's  advances  upon  herself  as  standing  for 
all  that  in  his  alliance  with  the  devil  he  must  adhere  to, 
she  scented  battle.  At  last  she  had  something  to  fight. 
Poverty  had  been  subdued  by  her  own  unaided  effort. 
Here  was  lewdness  come  to  the  assault  of  the  citadel: 
and  of  her  sons,  who  should  defend  her  to  the  last  gasp, 
Jamie  was  all  but  conquered. — Margaret  was  almost  her 
old  self  again.  She  was  never  subtle  in  her  campaigns, 
but  believed  in  a  direct  assault  upon  the  enemy.  She 
got  Tibby  to  turn  out  Jamie's  pockets — for  she  scorned 
to  do  such  a  thing  herself — and  in  turning  over  the  pa- 
pers that  were  produced  saw  verses,  a  letter  or  two  and 
could  not  help  in  this  way  becoming  possessed  of  Hu- 


150  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

bert's  address.  She  had  not  read  Jamie's  letters.  No: 
her  eye  had  fallen  on  one  of  them,  and  that  one  happened 
to  provide  her  with  the  information  she  required. 

Hubert  lived  in  St.  Peter's  Fields;  an  open  space 
which  had  been  fields  in  the  time  of  his  grandfather,  but 
was  now  bare  of  all  vegetation.  One  side  of  it  was  oc- 
cupied with  offices  in  a  terrace  which  had  once  been 
houses,  built  in  an  attempt  to  make  a  square  in  the  days 
when  Thrigsby's  rich  men  still  lived  near  their  work 
and  sometimes  over  their  warehouses.  Hubert  was  a 
child-like  being  and  regarded  his  tastes  as  existing  to  be 
gratified,  and  when  he  had  not  a  fully  developed  taste 
to  deal  with  he  was  quite  content  to  do  his  best  with 
a  whim  as  substitute.  He  was  mischievous  but  bore 
no  ill  will,  and  he  loved  contrasts.  That  was  why  he 
lived  in  Thrigsby  which  took  itself  so  seriously,  while 
his  own  dearest  employment  was  blowing  bubbles  with 
his  thoughts.  That,  in  his  view,  was  what  thoughts 
were  for;  they  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  serious  busi- 
ness of  life  which  was  tragic  and  only  to  be  dealt  with 
by  drawing  on  a  man's  last  emotional  reserves.  If  he 
had  been  loose  and  spendthrift  and  therefore  bankrupt, 
when  it  came  to  that  serious  business — ah,  well,  so  much 
the  worse  for  him.  He  would  never  know  the  tragedy 
of  his  own  life.  As  for  taking  the  obvious  and  super- 
ficial appearances  of  life  seriously,  that  was  a  mere  waste 
of  energy  and  under  no  circumstances  to  be  approved. 
Rather  it  was  to  be  actively  discouraged,  and  he  did  all 
he  could  to  discourage  it.  He  found  journalism  a  good 
and  amusing  means  of  furthering  his  aims  and  of  meet- 
ing young  men.  A  definite  theory  of  life  he  had  not: 
that  seemed  to  him  to  be  taking  things  altogether  too 
seriously,  to  expect  them  to  fit  in  with  any  idea  he  might 
have ;  but  he  was  firmly  on  the  side  of  the  young  against 


MARGARET  DISSATISFIED  151 

the  old.  He  was  a  dandy,  very  proud  of  his  whiskers 
and  careful  of  his  dress,  but,  for  contrast,  he  had  a  farm 
twenty  miles  out  of  Thrigsby  and  plumed  himself  on  his 
knowledge  of  Berkshire  pigs  and  his  skill  and  cunning 
in  the  buying  or  selling  of  a  horse.  On  this  evening 
he  had  arranged  a  dinner  for  the  bailiff  of  his  farm, 
Mr.  Home,  and  the  editor  of  his  paper,  Currie  Bigge,  a 
clever  young  man  from  Glasgow  who  had  come  to  him 
from  the  staff  of  a  local  Wesleyan  journal.  They  had 
dined  and  wined  well.  "Ech !"  said  Mr.  Home,  "I  mun 
let  out  me  belt!" — and  Hubert  was  brewing  a  milk 
punch,  when  his  man  brought  in  word  that  a  lady  was 
downstairs  and  wished  to  speak  to  him.  Bigge  and 
Home  had  only  this  in  common  that  women  meant  the 
same  to  them.  Mr.  Home  winked  at  Bigge,  and  Bigge 
tapped  his  large  nose,  and  wagged  his  head  towards  the 
inner  door.  Together  they  rose  and  tiptoed  out  of  the 
room. — -"A  lady?"  asked  Hubert. — "Not  a  young  lady," 
replied  the  man. — "I  should  hope  not,"  said  Hubert,  "at 
this  time  of  night.  A  lady  in  distress  perhaps?" — "She 
is  heavily  veiled,  sir,  and  she  said  her  business  was 
most  urgent." — "Take  away  the  glasses  for  the  punch 
in  to  the  gentlemen  in  the  inner  room  and  I  will  see  the 
lady." — Margaret  was  introduced.  She  smelled  the 
liquor  and  tobacco  at  once.  She  saw  the  charming  pic- 
tures on  the  wall,  the  elegance  of  the  furniture;  she 
saw  the  grace  and  ease  of  Hubert's  carriage  and  it 
seemed  to  her  insolent:  and  she  was  afraid.  She  raised 
her  veil. — "We  have  not  met  before,"  she  said ;  "I  hope 
we  shall  not  meet  again."  She  trembled  and  whipped  up 
her  indignation. — "I  am  Margaret  Keith." — '"Cousin 
Margaret,"  said  Hubert.  "I  am  glad  to  see  you.  I 

ought  to  have  called  ages  ago,  only " — "I  should  not 

have  received  you,"  she  said. — "The  Keiths  have  that 


152  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

feeling,"  rejoined  Hubert,  "and  I  can  understand  it. 
But  please  sit  down.  You  are  not  interrupting  me  and 
I  can  give  you  the  whole  evening  if  necessary." — He 
seemed  to  her  more  than  even  insolent. — "I  am  a 
widow,"  she  said. — "If  you  are  in  any  difficulty,"  he 
observed,  thinking  to  help  her  out  and  put  her  at  her 
ease,  "I  shall  be  only  too  glad  to  assist  you  in  any  way 
I  can." — "I  would  not  come  to  you  for  help,  Mr.  Greig." 
— He  remembered  then  that  she  was  Andrew's  sister; 
very  like  Andrew  too  in  face:  Andrew  liked  being  un- 
comfortable: perhaps  she  did  too. — She  plunged: 
"James  Lawrie  is  my  son." — "You  should  be  proud  of 
him.  He  has  the  true  grace  in  him." — "My  whole  de- 
sire is  to  be  proud  of  him,  and  therefore  I  have  come 
to  ask  you  not  to  see  him." — "I  like  him." — "I  do  not 
judge  you,  Mr.  Greig.  I  am  the  judge  of  no  man.  But 
he  has  received  favours  at  his  uncle's  hands." — Hubert 
turned  on  her  almost  in  anger:  "That  story  is  dead," 
he  said.  "It  should  not  carry  its  bitterness  over  the 
generations." — "We  have  our  pride,"  snapped  Margaret. 
• — "Aye,  you  have  that,"  cried  Hubert,  almost  forgetting 
himself,  for  she  looked  so  like  Andrew  as  she  said  those 
words.  "Come,  come.  We  know  what  feelings  there 
are.  What  is  it  you  want?" — "I  want  you  to  refuse  to 
see  my  son." — "And  if  he  will  not  be  refused?  He 
is  not  a  child." — "He  is  a  child  to  me  and  always  will 
be."— ^"Ah!  I  like  you  for  that.  But  he  is  not  a  child 
to  himself.  You  must  remember  that.  .  .  .  Have  I  in- 
jured him  in  any  way?  He  has  talked  to  me  freely  and 
frankly." — "Has  he?  Has  he?" — Margaret  could  not 
place  herself  under  any  obligation  to  the  wicked  Hubert, 
even  for  light  upon  her  son's  thoughts  and  character. 
She  checked  herself  and  went  on  to  point  out  that  though 
her  two  younger  sons  were  rapidly  making  positions  for 


MARGARET  DISSATISFIED  153 

themselves,  Jamie  was  confined  to  his  mill,  where  he 
saw  no  one  but  his  inferiors  and  had  no  one  to  perceive 
how  he  must  shine  amongst  them.  She  did  not  even 
hint  at  grudge  on  Andrew's  part  but  Hubert  tumbled 
to  her  meaning. — "I  am  grateful  to  you  for  coming," 
he  said.  "But  be  sure  I  have  no  influence  good  or  bad 
over  Jamie.  If  anything  it  is  he  who  has  influenced  me 
for  good.  What  would  you  say  if  he  were  to  leave  his 
uncle's  firm?" — "I  should  forbid  it." — "And  condemn 
him  to  the  mill!" — "He  would  not  be  if  he  gave  up — ' — " 
— "Me?  I  don't  think  so.  He  has  known  me  only 
since  last  summer  when  I  found  him  in  Westmoreland 
dreaming  of  a  world  in  which  there  were  no  factories, 
no  trains,  no  commerce,  no  uncles,  no  England — Andrew 
must  have  formed  his  opinion  of  him  before  that." — • 
"He  would  change." — "Not  Andrew.  Not  for  you,  nor 
for  anyone  in  the  world." — 'Margaret  remembered  her 
recent  unhappy  experience  and  was  silent,  and  having 
come  to  silence,  her  native  habit,  she  could  not  break  it. 
Hubert  took  it  to  be  the  end  of  the  interview.  He  rose 
and  walked  uneasily  about  the  room.  He  had  begun 
to  feel  sorry  for  her:  so  grim  and  stiff  she  was,  so 
unyielding.  Only  his  chivalry  could  make  him  serious 
for  any  length  of  time. — '"I  will  promise  you,"  he  said, 
"that  the  boy  shall  come  to  no  harm  through  me,  I  will 
promise  you  that.  In  all  my  life  I  have  harmed  no  man 
but  one  and  that  was  not  altogether  harm,  nor  alto- 
gether of  my  doing.  Indeed,  I  think  it  true  that  a  man 
can  harm  none  but  himself — — "  He  could  not  keep  it 
up  and  flashed:  "Short  of  murder,  that  is,  and  then  I 
am  not  so  sure  but  the  victim  is  a  partner  in  the  crime." 
— "Shame  on  you,"  cried  Margaret,  "to  speak  so 
lightly."  It  was  too  much  for  her  and  she  stalked  out  of 
the  room. — "Lord!"  thought  Hubert,  "what  a  fellow  I 


154  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

am  to  be  my  age" — he  was  forty-six — "and  to  be  the  vic- 
tim of  my  feelings." 

He  called  to  Home  and  Bigge  who  returned  with  the 
punch-bowl  nearly  empty. — '"Ever  hear,"  asked  Hubert 
of  Bigge,  "ever  hear  of  or  see  the  work  of  Quintus 
Flumen?"— "Aye."— "Is  he  a  poet?"— "As  near  as 
Thrigsby  is  ever  likely  to  get.  The  lace  does  not  stand 
for  poetry."— "Shall  we  have  him  for  The  Critic?"— "li 
he  could  do  light  verse." — Hubert  nodded.  He  was 
more  interested  in  Jamie  than  ever  and  had  already  for- 
gotten his  promise  to  Margaret.  In  any  case  he  would 
not  leave  it  to  her  to  define  what  was  and  was  not 
"harm." 

He  made  a  note  in  his  diary  to  see  his  brother  Donald. 
Already  he  was  beginning  to  think  of  ways  of  rescuing 
the  unhappy  James  from  Andrew's  clutches. — '"What  a 
shame!"  he  said  to  himself.  "What  a  shame!"  And 
as  he  thought  of  Jamie's  fate,  as  he  thought  of  him 
struggling  to  become  a  successful  Thrigsbeian,  so  ter- 
rible a  gloom  came  over  him  that  to  throw  it  off  he  be- 
gan to  talk  to  Mr.  Home  of  his  pigs  and  poultry  and 
the  price  of  wheat,  reducing  Mr.  Bigge  to  so  horrible  a 
pitch  of  boredom  that  that  clever  young  man  drank 
himself  to  sleep,  rolled  under  the  sofa,  could  not  be 
waked,  and  stayed  there  until  morning. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
CATEATON'S  BANK 


T  T  was  not  long  after  this  that  Jamie  received  a  letter 
•*•  which  astonished  him.  He  turned  it  over  and  over, 
read  and  re-read  it.  Mr.  J.  K.  Lawrie  it  was  addressed 
to :  but  what  had  he  to  do  with  Cateaton's  Bank  ?  Tom, 
he  knew,  had  an  account  there :  but  J.  K.  could  not  be 
taken  to  mean  Thomas,  and  Mr.  J.  K.  Lawrie  was  re- 
quested to  visit  the  manager  at  five-thirty  on  the  fol- 
lowing Wednesday.  His  first  impulse  was  to  take  the 
letter  to  Tom  and  ask  him  if  he  knew  anything  about 
it,  but  the  brothers  were  secret  with  each  other  and  kept 
their  affairs  to  themselves,  their  mother  being  the  clear- 
ing-house for  such  information  as  concerned  the  family. 
Then  he  thought  that  perhaps  Cateaton's  Bank  wished 
to  have  his  account  which  he  had  just  placed  with  the 
Thrigsby  and  District,  but  banks  do  not  go  out  of  their 
way  to  capture  insignificant  little  private  accounts. 
Banks  were  very  alarming  institutions,  and  Cateaton's 
was  the  bank  of  Thrigsby,  exclusive  as  the  Portico  Club, 
transacting  its  business  in  one  of  the  finest  mansions  in 
Morley  Street,  that  noble  thoroughfare  which  had  at 
one  time  been  Thrigsby's  Park  Lane.  Old  Elias  Ca- 
teaton  was  dead,  worth  two  hundred  thousand  pounds, 
and  his  family  died  with  him.  The  Keiths  and  the  Greigs 
had  banked  with  him:  they  said  they  had  made  him, 
though  Elias  used  to  declare  that  he  had  made  them. 
"They  had  brains,"  he  used  to  say,  "but  I  had  brains 


156  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

and  brass." — It  was  with  awe  then  that  Jamie  on  that 
Wednesday  walked  down  Morley  Street,  which  is  a  dig- 
nified street,  one  of  those  streets  that  nobody  who  is 
not  somebody  can  walk  down  without  unease.  The 
windows  of  the  houses  were  so  big:  such  portly  gentle- 
men were  to  be  seen  through  them,  such  handsome  apart- 
ments. No  shadow  of  poverty  could  fall  upon  Morley 
Street.  Poverty?  In  the  richest  town  in  the  North  of 
England  ?  With  a  street  like  Morley  Street  if  there  are 
poor  people  in  the  place  it  must  be  their  own  fault.  Jamie 
found  Morley  Street  convincing.  Morley  Street  he  knew 
had  justified  itself :  Morley  Street  had  fought  the  battle 
of  the  people's  bread.  After  that  victory  there  was  no 
excuse  for  poverty.  The  rich  men  had  grown  so  rich 
that  they  no  longer  lived  in  Morley  Street,  but  they  had 
their  clubs  there  and  their  mansions  were  now  their  of- 
fices and  their  warehouses  were  removed  to  lower  places. 
Cateaton's  Bank  had  a  forbidding  appearance.  Its 
entrance  was  as  awful  as  that  of  a  club,  and  it  had  a 
porter  as  dreadful.  Jamie  dared  -not  pass  him. — "He 
must  know  a  rich  man  when  he  sees  one,"  he  thought. 
"He'll  know  me  from  my  hat  to  my  boots  for  a  poor 
man's  son."  However,  the  bells  of  a  church  striking  half- 
past  five  drove  him  through  the  doors  past  the  porter  and 
he  asked  to  see  the  manager.  The  clerks  had  gone  home 
and  it  was  the  manager  himself  whom  he  addressed,  Mr. 
Rigby  Blair,  who  in  his  letter  giving  the  appointment 
had  written  his  name  thus 


CATEATON'S  BANK  157 

so  that  Jamie  was  unaware  of  his  name. — "Mr.  Lawrie?" 
he  said. — "My  name  is  Lawrie." — "Mr.  J.  K.  Lawrie?" 
— They  went  into  the  manager's  parlour,  a  most  gentle- 
manly place,  and  there  in  a  fat  voice,  such  a  voice  as 
Peter  might  use  in  welcoming  a  saint  into  Heaven,  Mr. 
Rigby  Blair,  who  by  the  light  of  his  lamp  was  revealed 
as  a  pink,  plump,  white-haired  little  cherub,  offered  Mr. 
J.  K.  Lawrie  a  position  in  the  bank  as  a  senior  clerk  at 
a  salary  half  as  much  again  as  that  given  him  by  his 
uncle  for  his  services  at  the  mill. — "It — I  must  think  it 
over,"  said  Jamie,  and  the  cherub's  feelings  were  ob- 
viously hurt.  Think  over  an  offer  of  a  stool  in  Ca- 
teaton's!  Think!  A  man  was  made  for  life  who  got 
into  Cateaton's.  Think!  Why,  fifty  young  men  would 
offer  themselves  to  fill  one  vacancy.  No  one  ever  got 
there  without  influence. — "I  mean,"  said  Jamie,  "I  had 
not  thought  of  it." — "I  thought  your  friends  would 
have  prepared  you,"  said  the  cherub. — "My  friends?" — 
"Mr.  Donald  Greig,"  breathed  the  cherub,  and  again  he 
was  like  Peter  referring  to  the  Greater  One  inside,  "Mr. 
Donald  Greig  gave  me  to  understand  that  he  would  pro- 
pose the  matter  to  you." — Jamie  began  to  understand 
that  there  was  nothing  supernatural  in  the  experience  he 
was  going  through. — "You  must  let  me  show  you  the 
bank,"  said  the  cherub,  taking  up  a  bunch  of  keys,  and 
off  he  trotted  with  Jamie  striding  behind,  with  his  hand 
thrust  into  the  breast  of  his  waistcoat,  a  trick  he  had 
caught  from  Hubert,  and  used  whenever  his  shyness 
forced  him  to  stand  on  his  dignity.  He  was  shown  the 
shining  counter;  the  stool  where  he  would  sit  in  the 
clerks'  office. — "Most  interesting  work,  most  interest- 
ing," chattered  the  cherub.  "Money  makes  the  world 
go  round,  you  know.  Nothing  done  without  money." 
They  visited  the  strong-room  and  the  vault. — "Half  the 


158  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

family  plate  in  Thrigsby  lies  here." — "Very  impressive," 
remarked  Jamie. — "There,"  said  Mr.  Blair,  letting  the 
heavy  iron  door  slam  to.  "There!  You  have  been  in 
business,  I  understand." — >"The  last  few  years,"  replied 
Jamie.  "Cotton." — "Ah!  the  fortunes  I  have  seen  made 
in  cotton :  but  terribly  insecure,  terrible,  terrible." — 
"Banks  fail  too,  don't  they?"  asked  Jamie.— "We  don't 
fail.  I  hope  you'll  come  to  us,  Mr.  Lawrie,  and — who 
knows? — perhaps  you  will  some  day  slip  into  my  shoes, 
though — ha!  ha! — they  would  be  a  trifle  small  for  you." 
— Jamie  liked  the  little  man  so  much,  and  he  liked  the 
quiet  gentlemanly  atmosphere  of  the  bank.  For  once 
in  a  way  he  had  felt  sure  of  himself.  He  knew  that  the 
matter  did  not  really  need  thinking  over.  He  would 
be  free  of  the  mill :  delivered  from  the  daily  double 
train  journey,  from  the  mill-hands,  of  whom  he  could 
never  decide  whether  they  were  better  or  worse  than 
himself.  He  would  have  more  money,  more  leisure,  and 
need  not  rise  so  early  in  the  morning.  Tibby  need  not 
rise  so  early  either.  (She  always  said  it  took  a  good 
half-hour  to  wake  him  up.)  That  thought  settled  it. 
He  told  Mr.  Blair  he  would  have  great  pleasure  in  ac- 
cepting the  position,  but  must  give  notice  to  his  present 
firm. — "Of  course,  of  course.  The  stool  shall  be  kept 
ready  until  you  come  to  put  a  shine  on  it  and  your 
breeches.  Ha!  Ha!" — "I  sit  like  a  rock,"  said  Jamie, 
rolling  his  "r"  at  his  most  Scots,  for  he  had  begun  to 
be  excited.  He  felt  as  though  all  his  problems  were 
settled.  There  was  an  end  of  his  exile.  It  was  won- 
derful, splendid.  He  shook  hands  with  Mr.  Blair  three 
times.  Outside  the  porter  was  waiting  to  shut  the  big 
outer  door.  Jamie  shook  hands  with  him  too. — "I'm 
coming  to  work  here,"  he  said. — "Yes,  sir,"  said  the 
porter.  "I'm  very  pleased,  sir." — "Pleased?  I  am 


CATEATON'S  BANK  159 

that,"  cried  Jamie,  and  "Losh!"  he  said  to  himself, 
"there'll  be  no  stopping  me  now." 

Then  he  remembered  the  mention  of  Donald  Greig, 
and  how  easy  and  full  life  had  become  since  his  meet- 
ing with  Hubert.  O!  Hubert  was  the  kindest  man.  It 
must  have  been  Hubert,  to  think  of  such  a  thing;  dull, 
heavy  Donald  could  not  have  thought  of  it  by  himself. 
It  was  amazing  how  Hubert  illuminated  everything  he 
touched  so  that  it  became  comprehensible  and  ceased  to 
be  oppressive.  Hubert's  rooms  were  only  just  round  the 
corner.  Jamie  rushed  up,  burst  in  on  his  cousin,  roaring, 

"I'm  a  banker.     I'm  a  banker,  I'm " — "You'll  turn 

into  a  parrot  if  you  don't  calm  down,"  said  Hubert.  "A 
banker  is  one  who  borrows  or  lends  money  for  a  con- 
sideration. I'm  not  sure  that  it  isn't  a  disgraceful  trade 
which  would  much  better  have  been  left  to  the  Jews." — 
"Well,"  said  Jamie,  "I'm  in  a  bank,  and  my  immortal 
soul  is  saved :  a  bank,  in  Morley  Street,  and  I  have  you 
to  thank  for  it." — "Not  at  all,"  said  Hubert.  "If  you 
have  anybody  to  thank,  it  is  your  mother." — "My 
mother?" — "Yes.  Are  you  always  going  to  let  her  fight 
your  battles  for  you?" — "My  mother?  Do  you  mean 
she  went  to  Donald?" — "I  only  mean  what  I  say." — 
Hubert  had  begun  to  enjoy  the  mistake  and  Jamie's  con- 
fusion. He  said :  "My  only  suggestion  to  you  is  one 
that  she  would  not  approve.  How  would  you  like  to 
write  on  The  Critic?" — 'Truly  the  heavens  had  burst 
upon  the  earth  that  day. — "We  don't  want  love  poems,* 
said  Hubert. — "No-o-o." — "Nor  epic  poems,  nor  dra- 
matic poems,  nor  descriptive  poems.  'Bosky'  and  'lush' 
are  barred.  Nor  religious  poems,  nor  poems  about  your 
emotions  in  your  more  solitary  moments.  Solitary  mo- 
ments are  a  man's  own  fault,  his  private  particular  hell, 
and  the  less  said  about  them  the  better.  If  you  can't 


160  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

write  anything  but  those  different  kinds  of  poems,  try 
prose." — "I'd  write  myself  to  death,"  cried  Jamie,  "if  I 
thought  I  could  do  a  thing  would  please  you." — "O! 
I'm  easily  pleased,"  said  Hubert.  "I'm  only  an  amateur. 
It's  the  professional  Currie  Bigge  you  have  to  please, 
not  me.  I'm  busy  now.  Run  home  with  your  news. 
Don't  say  you've  seen  me.  I  have  an  idea  your  mother 
has  the  usual  Keith  view  of  my  character." — "But  I'll 
tell  her  what  you  are." — "She  knows  what  I  am ;  at  least 
she  knows  how  I  look  in  the  world  according  to  her, 
and  she  is  not  going  to  alter  that." — "I  say  she  shall.  I 
say  the  world  that  condemns  you  must  be  brought  to  its 
senses." — Hubert  smiled :  "My  dear  James,"  he  said, 
"if  you  can  bring  yourself  to  your  senses  it  will  be  as 
much  as  you  can  accomplish."  And  at  once  the  stream 
of  ecstasy  in  Jamie  rushed  through  him,  with  his  mind 
labouring  after  it,  seeing  the  dim  promise  of  blinding 
visions  and  crying  to  his  soul :  "There,  there  lies  the 
summit  of  thy  well-being!" — Hubert  bundled  him  out 
and  was  sorry  in  a  moment  when  he  heard  the  young 
man  leaping  down  the  stairs.  He  should  have  let  him 
stay  until  he  had  found  some  emotional  satisfaction.  It 
was  too  late  now,  though.  Jamie  must  be  let  go  with 
his  dangerous  exaltation,  which,  on  the  whole,  though 
he  admired  it,  Hubert  disliked.  It  was  too  delicate  a 
thing  for  him  to  find  amusement  in  it.  If  only  Jamie 
had  been  a  woman!  He  roused  his  cousin's  chivalry, 
only  to  have  it  done  to  death  with  mockery. — "It  only 
needed  that,"  mused  Hubert,  "to  put  the  cap  on  the 
comedy  of  our  invasion  of  England.  I  am  tired  of  it  all, 
an'  'twere  not  for  Jamie  Lawrie,  I  would  lay  me  doon 
an'  die." 

On  his  way  home  Jamie  had  to  pass  the  theatre.     He 
stopped  outside  it  and  studied  the  bills.     The  play  that 


CATEATON'S  BANK  161 

night  was  to  be  Richard  II.,  with  Mr.  Gaylor  from  a 
London  theatre  in  the  principal  part.  Another  bill  set 
forth  Mr.  Gaylor's  achievements,  and  various  printed 
opinions  on  them. — "I'll  take  Tibby,"  thought  Jamie. 
"I'll  go  to  see  a  play.  I'll  see  Mr.  Wilcox." — He  looked 
to  see  if  Mr.  Wilcox  was  in  the  bill.  Yes. — '"I'll  cele- 
brate the  occasion.  I  must  celebrate  it;  and  I'll  take 
Tibby."  He  walked  in  and  bought  two  seats  in  the 
stalls,  and  as  he  came  out  again  looked  to  right  and  left 
to  make  sure  he  had  not  been  seen.  Then  he  thought 
he  had  made  a  fool  of  himself,  but  he  was  getting  used 
to  that  and  was  no  longer  inclined  to  despair  over  it. 
He  was  worried  when  he  thought  that  Tibby  might  not 
be  able  to  come  out,  and  he  would  have  wasted  all  those 
shillings.  At  a  furious  pace  he  walked  home,  working 
off  his  excitement,  half  sorry  to  let  it  go,  half  dreading 
lest  it  should  still  be  apparent  when  he  got  home.  It 
would  never  do  to  be  excited  in  front  of  Tom,  who 
would  be  ready  with  one  of  his  sneers,  though,  he 
thought,  it  would  be  pleasant  if  he  could  let  his  mother 
see  how  glad  he  was  about  it.  He  felt  so  tender  towards 
them  all,  even  to  Tom,  who  was,  after  all,  reliable.  You 
could  always  depend  on  Tom,  as,  of  course,  old  Andrew 
had  found.  That  brought  Andrew  into  Jamie's  mood 
and  him  he  did  not  regret.  He  certainly  had  made 
himself  a  big  man,  and  his  pride  must  have  suffered 
terribly  when  his  wife  left  him.  And  Hubert!  Jamie 
was  astonished  to  find  that  there  was  room  for  both 
Andrew  and  Hubert  in  the  same  mental  circle.  He  had 
always  kept  them  rigidly  apart.  Now  thinking  of  them 
together,  he  found  that  each  had  gained  something,  while 
his  own  excitement  was  eased  and  he  felt  that  he  had 
made  a  discovery,  though  what  the  exact  nature  of  it 
was  he  did  not  know.  He  was  suddenly  pleased  with 


162  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

everything  he  saw  and  with  everyone.  He  smiled  on  an 
old  woman  coming  out  of  a  gin-shop  with  a  bottle  under 
her  apron,  and  she  said  a  fine  young  man  like  him  ought 
not  to  be  without  a  sweetheart. — "Will  you  find  me 
one  ?"  he  asked. — "Open  your  mouth  and  shut  your  eyes 
and  see  what  God'll  send  you."  She  gave  him  a  leer 
and  an  ogle  and  said  that  sweethearts  did  not  want 
finding,  not  for  a  fine  young  man  like  him.  That  en- 
counter made  Jamie  feel  still  more  pleased  with  him- 
self and  he  began  to  look  for  sweethearts  and  was 
amazed  at  the  number  available,  all  ready  and  willing. 
— "Dear  me,"  he  thought,  "and  I  have  always  been  so 
terribly  afraid  of  them." — Bright  eyes  of  girls  and 
women  made  him  very  happy,  and  he  remembered  Green 
grow  the  rashes,  O!  and  for  the  first  time  perceived  the 
full-throated  chuckle  that  comes  up  through  the  verses: 

"The  sweetest  hours  that  e'er  I  spent, 
Were  spent  among  the  lasses,  O!" 

When  he  reached  home  there  was  no  one  in  the 
house  but  Tibby.  Her  ugliness  resisted  his  delight  in 
bright  eyes  and  he  felt  immensely  sorry  for  her.  He 
remembered  how  he  had  kissed  her  on  the  road  outside 
Kirkcudbright.  The  years  had  not  been  kind  to  her. 
Her  face  was  more  rugged  for  its  thinness  and  pallor. 
Her  body  was  thin  too,  though  strong:  but  a  bad  man 
or  a  boy  would  laugh  at  her.  Her  hair  at  the  back 
would  rouse  interest:  a  man  might  hurry  to  catch  her 
up  in  the  street:  when  he  saw  her  face  he  would  walk 
faster  than  ever.  She  had  the  air  as  she  stood  there  in 
her  kitchen  of  being  huddled  over  herself,  of  withdraw- 
ing, of  taking  advantage  of  her  repellent  face  to  live 
within  herself,  to  live  and  watch  and  pray.  Bird-like 


CATEATON'S  BANK  163 

she  was,  like  a  strong  wild  bird.  She  made  Jamie  feel 
weak  and  almost  ashamed  of  his  pleasure  in  bright  eyes. 
She  made  him  feel  for  a  moment  that  his  Self  was  un- 
important and  not  a  thing  to  be  pleased  with  or  despond- 
ent about.  Then  into  her  strange  rugged  face,  as  though 
she  had  seen  into  him  and  divined  his  young  folly,  there 
crept  a  little  tender  pitying  smile.  Jamie  said : — "I'm 
glad  you're  alone,  Tibby." — "I'm  used  to  it,"  said  she. — • 
"I've  news  for  you.  I've  got  an  appointment  in  a  bank." 
— "That's  news  indeed,  and  good." — "I'll  no  have  to 
rise  from  my  bed  s6  early." — "You'll  relish  that.  You 
love  your  bed." — "I  do  that.  Tibby,  do  you  ever  go 
out?" — "For  the  marketing,  and  a  breath  of  air  some- 
times, not  that  there's  much  air  in  this  place." — '"Aye, 
it  is  not  like  home." — "It  is  not." — "Will  you — will 
you  come  out  with  me  to-night,  to  the  play?" — "To  the 
play?"  Tibby's  eyes  sparkled. — "Have  you  never  seen 
a  play?" — "Never.  My  father  would  tell  me  of  plays 
he  saw  in  Edinburgh,  with  murders  and  ghosts,  and  poor 
women  nearly  rattled  out  of  their  wits  with  the  wicked- 
ness of  men." — '"Men  aren't  so  wicked,  Tibby." — 
"They're  a  conceited  lot."— "But,  Tibby,  will  you?"— 
"And  leave  the  house  empty?" — "John  will  be  in  soon." 
—She  turned  and  faced  him. — "It  will  be  deceiving 
Mrs.  Lawrie." — "Aye,"  said  Jamie,  "for  a  little  pleas- 
ure."— '"Then  you'll  deceive  her  for  the  big  ones." — 
"Not  I."  Tibby  thought  of  Margaret  having  Jamie's 
pockets  turned  out,  and,  as  she  really  wanted  to  go, 
and  would  not  for  the  world  miss  an  opportunity  of 
being  with  Jamie,  she  satisfied  her  conscience  with  that 
tit-for-tat.  They  had  tea  together  in  the  kitchen,  washed 
up  after  it,  and  stole  out  by  the  back  door  as  John  came 
in  by  the  front. 

It  was  a  great  adventure  for  both  of  them.     Jamie 


164  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

had  a  shock.  As  they  walked  he  began  to  explain  the 
play  to  Tibby,  only  to  find  that  she  had  read  it.  Then 
he  discovered  that  she  had  read  most  of  his  books,  tak- 
ing them  up  as  he  laid  them  down — and  only  reading 
those  which,  by  the  marks,  he  had  finished. — "She  ought 
not  to  be  a  servant,"  he  thought,  and  Tibby  at  the  same 
time  was  thinking — "He's  too  good  for  a  bank."-  -"It's 
a  shame,"  said  he,  "that  you  should  be  so  much  alone." 
— "Mrs.  Lawrie  is  vera  good  to  me  and  lets  me  talk 
when  I  want  to  talk.  She's  no  talker  herself  and  is 
glad  to  hear  a  word  now  and  then  when  you're  all  away 
and  the  house  is  so  still." — That  came  home  to  Jamie 
too.  He  had  never  before  thought  what  the  house  must 
be  like  with  himself  and  his  brothers  out  of  it  all  day 
long.  He  imagined  an  impossible  desolation. — '"When 
I'm  at  the  bank,"  he  said,  "I'll  be  home  by  five."— 
"You'll  have  time  then  to  be  your  own  man  awhile."- 
"Yes,  I'm  going  to  write." — "I  knew  that,"  said  she, 
and  he  became  rather  afraid  of  her.  What  was  there 
that  she  didn't  know  ?  He  sounded  her  as  to  her  knowl- 
edge of  the  family  and  she  had  it  all  pat,  even  the  rami- 
fications of  Greig  and  Allison-Greig.  He  tried  another 
tack : — "Tibby,  sometimes  this  place  gives  me  a  sense 
of  appalling  disaster.  I  feel  as  though  God  must  visit 
it  with  an  earthquake  as  He  did  Lisbon." — -"No,"  re- 
plied she,  "if  He  were  going  to  do  that  He  would  have 
given  it  more  blessings." — She  seemed  almost  wonderful 
to  Jamie  then,  but  as  she  worked  in  the  kitchen  of  his 
house,  and,  according  to  the  faith  of  his  upbringing,  had 
no  right  to  be  alive  at  all,  being  a  bastard,  he  could  not 
admit  her  wonder  and  regarded  her,  instead,  with 
amused  indulgence,  and  unconsciously  borrowed  from 
Hubert  the  attitude  which  that  kindly  tease  had  for  him- 
self. 


CATEATON'S  BANK  165 

They  entered  the  play-house  and  took  their  seats. 

In  those  days  star-actors  from  London  visited  the 
provinces  for  a  day  or  two  at  a  time  and  gave  the 
familiar  performances  to  which  the  stock  company  had 
with  very  few  rehearsals  to  adapt  themselves  as  best 
they  could.  Mr.  Gaylor  was  a  bad  actor  but  a  fine  elo- 
cutionist; however,  for  Jamie  and  Tibby,  it  being  their 
first  visit  to  a  play-house,  all  was  wonderful.  They 
gazed  into  another  brilliant  world,  where  superhuman, 
brilliant  figures  moved,  and  spoke  from  their  hearts  the 
grief,  the  sorrow,  the  anger,  the  pride,  the  despair,  the 
baseness,  and  the  rare,  wise  tenderness  that  were  in 
them.  Mr.  Wilcox  was  the  gardener,  but  it  was  only 
towards  the  end  of  his  scene  with  the  Queen  that  Jamie 
recognised  him  and  then  he  was  distressed  by  this  in- 
trusion of  an  ordinary  human  being  whom  he  had  known 
at  a  desk  in  an  office,  eating  and  drinking,  even  drunk. 
But  soon  he  was  flattered  too.  It  gave  him  a  human, 
sentimental  share  in  that  marvellous  world,  but  his 
pleasure  in  it  was  not  so  keen  as  when  it  had  been  a 
miraculous,  living  and  changing  creation,  remote  from 
himself,  as  remote  as  a  true  poem,  like  Endymion,  or  a 
beautiful  woman,  like  Agnes  of  the  lake.  He  was  dis- 
appointed and  began  to  criticise,  to  notice  defects  in  the 
scenery,  which  was  shabby,  and  in  the  dresses,  which 
were  tawdry.  The  face  of  a  girl  in  attendance  on  the 
Queen  was  familiar  though  he  could  not  recognise  it. 
In  the  interval  before  the  fifth  act,  its  association  came 
back  to  him.  It  was  Selina  Leslie.  Selina  on  the  stage ! 
He  had  heard  nothing  of  it.  Did  Tibby  know  ?— "That's 
two  months  ago,  now.  It  has  been  a  sore  grief  to  Mrs. 
Leslie,  who  is  a  good  body." — "That  she  is,"  said  Jamie. 
— "It  was  Miss  Selina's  good  looks.  There  was  this 
man  and  that  man  telling  her  how  pretty  she  was  and 


i66  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

then  nothing  was  good  enough  for  her  at  home :  though 
I  must  say  a  family  as  large  as  that  is  a  trial.  One  fine 
morning  she  was  gone.  They  found  her,  but  nothing 
would  induce  her  to  come  back.  She'd  been  taken  to 
the  theatre  a  good  deal  and  it  turned  her  head.  There 
were  queans  on  the  stage  more  beautiful  than  herself." 
— "She  was  more  beautiful  than  that  Queen,"  said 
Jamie.  "And  is  Mrs.  Leslie ?  She  can't  be  unfor- 
giving."— "Oh!  no.  I  think  Mrs.  Leslie  sees  her,  but 
Mr.  Leslie  will  not  have  her  name  spoken  in  his  pres- 
ence."— "I  knew  Mrs.  Leslie  would  not  be  hard,"  said 
Jamie.  The  curtain  went  up  and  a  man  in  front  of  them 
who  had  a  book  in  his  hand  turned  and  said  testily: 
"Will  you  be  silent,  sir?" 

Mr.  Wilcox  had  seen  Jamie  in  the  auditorium  and 
had  dressed  quickly  and  was  waiting  outside  for  him. 
"You've  come  at  last,  my  boy,"  he  said. — "Yes,"  said 
Jamie,  "at  last,  and  I  am  sorry  it  was  not  sooner."-  -"It 
is  all  prejudice,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox,  "about  the  theatre 
being  wicked,  isn't  it?  It's  a  lovely  part,  the  gardener." 
— "And  you  did  it  very  well,  didn't  he,  Tibby?"-  -"Very 
well  indeed,"  said  Tibby  shyly.  Mr.  Wilcox 'had  glanced 
at  her  .but  had  taken  no  further  interest.  "You  must 
come  again,  my  boy,"  he  said,  "and  we'll  have  that  pro- 
logue out  of  you  yet." — "I  don't  know  about  that," 
replied  Jamie,  "but  I'll  come  again,  and  I'd  like  to  see 
you  in  your  lodgings." — "Oh!  I'm  moved  from  there. 
The  flesh-pots  ran  dry  and  a  poor  player  must  live 
where  he  may."  He  gave  his  address,  sighted  another 
friend  in  the  thin  stream  of  people  coming  from  the 
house  and  was  off. — "That's  one  of  the  best  friends  I 
ever  had,"  said  Jamie.  Tibby  replied  rather  spitefully : 
"It  is  nice  of  you  to  own  to  him.  There's  not  many 


CATEATON'S  BANK  167 

who  would." — "Why  not?"  he  asked  and  she  would 
not  give  any  answer. 

She  had  enjoyed  the  play,  though  it  had  not  con- 
tained enough  murders  for  her  and  she  thought  that 
John  o'  Gaunt  had  talked  a  deal  too  much  for  a  dying 
man.  It  had  been  to  her  nothing  but  mummery  and 
Jamie,  to  whom  it  had  been  an  experience,  was  rather 
annoyed  with  her.  He  relapsed  into  silence  and  harked 
back  to  the  amazing  pleasure  the  first  acts  had  been  to 
him  before  he  had  recognised  Mr.  Wilcox  and  been 
brought  down  to  earth. — "Would  you  like  to  go  again?" 
he  asked. — "In  six  months'  time,"  said  she.  And  that 
annoyed  him  too  for  he  would  have  liked  her  to  want 
it  all  over  again  at  once. — "It  was  not  so  good,"  said 
Tibby,  "as  my  father's  telling  of  plays." — "Do  you 
measure  everything  by  your  father?"  asked  Jamie. — 
"Aye,  everything." 

They  had  reached  Murray  Street  and  arranged  that 
Tibby  should  go  in  at  once  by  the  back  door  while  he 
should  wait  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  and  then  go  in 
by  the  front  door.  The  stratagem  succeeded.  Margaret 
swallowed  Tibby's  fiction  and  did  not  question  her  son, 
for  she  had  been  schooled  by  Tom  into  not  inquiring 
into  his  ways  of  spending  the  evenings  when  he  was  out. 
—Jamie  said:  "I've  news  for  you,  Mother." — "News? 
What  news?  Good,  I  hope." — "The  best  I've  had  yet. 
Will  you  guess?"— "I  will  not.  It's  late."— "Then— 
I've  been  offered  a  post  in  Cateaton's  Bank,  and  I've  ac- 
cepted it"— "Leave— the— mill?"— "Aye."— "After  all 
your  uncle  has  done  for  you?" — "There's  thousands 
could  do  my  work  at  the  mill." — "And  thousands  could 
do  what  you'll  have  to  do  at  the  bank." — "You're  not 
displeased,  Mother?  Why,  I  thought "  He  was 


168  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

puzzled.  He  had  thought  she  had  waited  up  to  be  alone 
with  him,  to  see  how  glad  he  was  of  what  she  had  done 
for  him. — "I  thought  you  knew,"  he  said. — '"How 
should  I  know?" — "It  was  Donald  Greig  got  me  in." — 
"I  think  you  should  have  consulted  me  before  you  ac- 
cepted."— "It's  a  better  salary  and  it's  safe.  I  can  give 
you  ten  pounds  at  once  for  the  fund." — Margaret  was 
mollified.  It  was  the  first  time  Jamie  had  acknowledged 
her  ambition  to  pay  back  all  she  had  had  in  charity. 
Truth  to  tell  he  could  neither  understand  nor  sympathise 
with  her  desire.  He  was  free  with  his  money  and  knew 
nothing  of  borrowing  or  lending.  When  there  was 
need  he  would  give  and  had  he  been  in  need  himself 
would  have  accepted.  And  having  made  his  offer,  he  re- 
gretted it,  for  it  seemed  to  him  almost  like  buying  her 
approval. — "I  do  not  think,"  she  said,  "the  Greigs  will 
be  able  to  do  "more  for  you  than  the  Keiths.  After  all, 
you  are  a  Keith  and  owe  some  loyalty  to  the  family."- 
"I'm  a  Lawrie  first,"  said  he,  "and  that  I'll  never  for- 
get."— "Your  uncle  will  be  very  hurt."— -"Not  he.  He 
has  his  Tom,  and  I  think  John  was  right  when  he  said 
there  was  only  room  for  Tom.  There  are  times  when 
I  think  there's  only  room  for  Tom  in  the  whole  wide 
world.  And  I'm  sure  he  thinks  so." — Margaret  said 
tartly:  "Tom  is  the  only  good  Keith  among  you." 
And  with  that  she  went  to  her  bed  where  she  lay  awake 
shaken  with  hatred  of  a  world  which  would  not  be 
shaped  to  her  ends  or  her  liking. 

When  Tom  heard  the  news  in  the  morning  from  his 
mother's  lips  he  said: — "Dang  me.  I'll  have  to  move 
my  account.  I  won't  have  it  made  up  by  my  own 
brother."— "Is  it  really  a  good  position?" — "To  be  in  a 
bank,"  said  Tom,  "is  to  be  near  money,  and  if  a  man 


CATEATON'S  BANK  169 

can't  turn  it  in  his  own  direction  he's  a  fool." — He 
gulped  down  his  breakfast  of  porridge  and  honey  and 
rushed  away  to  the  office.  That  very  afternoon  he  trans- 
ferred his  account  to  the  Thrigsby  and  District. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

SELINA    LESLIE 


NCE  installed  at  the  bank,  Jamie  felt,  as  Tibby  had 
foretold,  his  own  man.  Banking  was  a  gentle- 
manly and  a  cloistered  business.  Its  hours  of  work 
were  regular  and  short;  once  a  month  there  was  a  late 
night  and  twice  a  year  there  was  "balancing,"  which 
meant  working  into  the  small  hours,  but  there  were  no 
sudden  inflations  or  depressions.  Thrigsby  might  be  and 
generally  was  feverish  and  excited,  but  the  bank  was 
calm  and  dignified.  It  could  and  did  break  quite  impor- 
tant people  with  the  remorselessness  of  a  machine;  a 
man  without  credit  did  not  exist  for  it.  Like  a  church  it 
had  powers  of  excommunication.  It  was  very  like  a 
church  and  men  like  Mr.  Rigby  Blair  came  to  it  in  a 
religious  spirit,  and  this  had  its  effect  upon  Jamie,  who 
began  to  regard  Sunday  as  a  day  of  rest  and  relaxation 
rather  than  as  a  day  of  worship,  though  he  still  accom- 
panied his  mother  to  church  and  regularly  placed  a 
shilling  in  the  bag  passed  round  by  Peter  Leslie.  Yet 
the  ceremony  of  offering  the  money  so  collected  to  God 
seemed  to  him  inappropriate.  The  God  of  that  church 
was  not  the  God  of  the  bank.  This  was  the  beginning 
of  his  perception  that  there  are  Gods  and  Gods  and  that 
men  make  them  in  their  image  as  they  go.  He  was 
made  rather  unhappy  at  first  and  was  left  rather  sadly 

170 


SELINA  LESLIE  171 


envious  of  his  mother,  whose  God  was  perfectly  definite 
and  was  able  to  provide  for  every  contingency  except 
free,  spontaneous  human  desire,  for  which  no  provision 
whatever  was  made.  It  was  easy  enough  for  Margaret, 
who  had  no  life  except  in  her  sons  and  no  traffic  with 
the  world  outside,  but  while  the  God  of  her  church  was 
served  with  righteous  conduct  and  the  support  of  mar- 
riage and  the  family — thieving  and  murder  being  out  of 
the  question  for  respectable  people — the  God  of  the  bank 
was  served  with  lies.  In  business  Jamie  never  met  a 
man  who  did  not  begin  by  lying  and  then  allowing  him- 
self reluctantly  to  be  brought  back  to  such  truth  as  was 
necessary  for  the  transaction  in  hand,  so  that  though 
there  was  always  an  air  of  importance,  there  was,  in 
fact,  very  little  done.  Indeed  all  the  responsible  persons 
he  knew  worked  as  long  and  as  little  as  possible,  while 
the  rest  had  punctuality  both  in  coming  and  in  leaving 
for  almost  their  only  virtue.  However,  Jamie  supposed 
it  was  all  right  and  did  not  look  closely  into  the  matter, 
but,  being1  forced  to  admit  his  own  discomfort,  he  sought 
the  means  of  relieving  it  in  literary  and  mental  activity 
and  in  the  company  of  people  who  really  were  interested 
in  what  they  were  doing,  with  no  consideration  for  what 
they  might  get  out  of  it.  Pressure  at  home  had  much 
to  do  with  this  desire  of  his.  Tom  and  his  mother  were 
magnificently  virtuous.  They  were  Keiths ;  they  had  re- 
mained true  to  the  family;  they  were  rewarded;  they 
had  kept  the  family  intact ;  James  and  John  had  strayed 
from  the  fold,  they  had  sold  themselves  into  bondage 
and  were  the  servants  of  strangers;  in  short,  Tom's 
salary  was  doubled  and  he  was  in  charge  of  a  depart- 
ment, he  had  put  down  a  hundred  pounds  for  the  fund, 
when  he  heard  that  Jamie  had  contributed  ten ;  Thrigsby 
had  begun  to  hear  of  Tom,  who  was  a  member  of  two 


172  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

clubs. — Jamie  joined  the  Literary  and  Philosophical 
Society,  through  Hubert,  and  discovered  that  there  were 
brains  also  in  Thrigsby ;  an  illustrious  chemist,  a  famous 
musician,  and  a  queer  little  man  who  had  measured  the 
velocity  of  a  particle  of  hydrogen.  Through  this  asso- 
ciation he  discovered  that  Newton  had  other  claims  to 
fame  and  the  gratitude  of  mankind  than  the  possession 
of  a  dog  called  Diamond.  But  the  philosophers  were  too 
disinterested  for  Jamie;  they  were  an  intolerant  and 
inconsiderate  set  and  they  might  as  well  have  lived  on 
a  mountain  as  in  Thrigsby  for  all  they  cared  about  it; 
and  Thrigsby  had  become  fascinating  and  absorbing  to 
him  in  the  security  and  freedom  he  found  in  his  new 
gentlemanly  occupation.  However,  from  contact  with 
these  great  minds  he  learned  that  problems  and  questions 
which  teased  and  tickled  his  mind  were  realities  to  them. 
He  also  learned  that  nothing  was  settled,  that  very  little 
was  known,  that  there  might  be  other  more  plausible 
theories  concerning  the  origin  of  the  world  than  that  set 
forth  with  such  beautiful  simplicity  in  Genesis.  Jamie 
could  not  accept  the  fact  of  human  ignorance  from  Hu- 
bert, but  when  he  was  confronted  with  the  austere 
probity  of  these  men  he  could  not  rid  his  mind  of  it  and 
was  obsessed  by  it,  for  he  argued  that  if  men  really 
had  divinely  inspired  knowledge  they  had  made  singu- 
larly little  use  of  it  if  they  could  not  rise  above  the 
brutality  of  Thrigsby.  Life  in  Thrigsby  was  brutal; 
there  was  no  getting  away  from  that.  Machines  were 
carefully  and  lovingly  tended,  but  no  one  looked  after 
the  men  and  women,  who  came  pouring  into  the  place 
from  the  country,  and,  apparently,  from  all  parts  of 
the  world,  for  in  the  streets  could  be  heard  almost  every 
European  language,  and  there  were  churches,  syna- 
gogues, basilicas,  mosques,  chapels,  English,  Welsh  and 


SELINA  LESLIE  173 


Scotch,  and  everywhere  there  were  houses  being  built, 
on  marshes,  on  slap-heaps,  and  on  filled-in  brooks  and 
little  rivers,  over  graveyards  and  places  that  for  gen- 
erations had  been  avoided  as  containing  plague-pits. 
Thrigsby  absorbed  them  all ;  grew  immense  factories  for 
them  to  work  in  and  little  houses  for  them  to  live  in, 
blotting  out  gardens,  fields,  woods,  spinneys,  leaving 
nowhere  any  open  space,  not  even  in  the  centre  of  the 
town,  until  Thrigsby  in  its  municipal  pride  decided  that 
it  needed  a  new  town  hall  and  discovered  that  it  had 
nowhere  to  put  it.  Andrew  Keith  had  a  say  in  that 
matter  and  won  a  brief  and  unpleasant  notoriety  by  in- 
triguing for  the  selection  of  a  plot  of  land  which  meant 
pulling  down  one  of  his  warehouses  for  which  he  was 
most  generously  compensated. — "We  will  have,"  said 
Thrigsby,  "the  biggest  Town  Hall  in  the  North  of 
England."  And  in  the  course  of  a  year  or  two  Thrigsby 
had  its  desire  in  a  vast  Gothic  structure  with  an  im- 
mense tower,  with  a  four-faced  clock,  a  bell  which  would 
be  heard  on  the  wind  for  at  least  five  miles,  and  a  spiked 
golden  ball  on  top.  The  Town  Hall  was  opened  by  a 
Great  Personage:  the  mayor  was  knighted.  A  day  or 
two  later  a  sea-gull  spiked  itself  on  the  golden  ball  and 
created  through  the  town  a  sensation  greater  than  had 
been  known  since  a  woman  killed  her  baby  and  hid  its 
body  under  the  kitchen  hearth.  Thousands  of  Thrigs- 
beians  who  had  never  moved  out  of  their  ordinary  path 
to  see  the  Town  Hall  itself,  thronged  the  new  square 
day  after  day  to  see  the  dead  bird  hanging  there.  And 
out  of  that  dead  bird  grew  modern  Thrigsby,  a  city 
aware  of  itself.  It  and  Jamie  became  aware  of  them- 
selves about  the  same  time  and  he  realised  that  he  was 
definitely  antagonistic  to  it.  At  first  he  was  acutely 
miserable  and  thought  that  he  must  fly,  but  very  soon  he 


174  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

was  good-humoured  about  it,  wrestled  with  himself,  de- 
cided that  Thrigsby  was  by  force  of  circumstance — 
since  he  could  not  leave  his  mother — the  scene  of  the 
adventure  of  his  life  and  that  he  must  see  it  through. 
He  was  not  going  to  surrender  his  mother  altogether 
to  Tom.  He  could  make  her  laugh  and  Tom  would 
never  even  try  to  do  that.  He  wrote  a  satirical  little 
poem  on  the  sea-gull  for  The  Critic,  but  it  was  rather 
obscure  in  its  hint  of  the  soul  of  the  place  being  impaled 
Uipon  its  pretensions,  so  that  it  was  neither  understood 
nor  gave  offence.  Hubert  liked  it,  however,  but  told 
the  author  that  he  was  too  young  yet  to  be  thinking  of 
dead  souls  and  appointed  him  to  do  dramatic  criticism. 
Here  was  work  that  Jamie  loved.  He  measured  all  that 
he  saw  by  that  first  delirious  impression  when  delight 
had  run  through  his  veins,  and  though  he  was  drastic, 
he  was  witty  and  charming.  Quintus  Flumen  became  a 
name  that  stood  for  something  in  Thrigsby.  There  was 
a  battle  royal  over  it  with  Margaret,  who  was  pleased 
that  her  son  should  be  talked  about  but  horrified  by  his 
being  connected  with  the  theatre,  an  abode  of  the  Devil, 
who  was  an  even  more  real  personage  to  her  than  God. 
— "It  is  the  straight  road  to  Hell,"  she  said.  "It  is  the 
glittering  gate  thereof." — "But  I  am  trying  to  persuade 
my  readers,"  said  Jamie,  "to  regard  it  as  a  glimpse  of 
Heaven." — "Nothing,"  replied  she,  "can  make  wrong 
right,  good  of  a  painted  mummery." — "It  is  only  a  kind 
of  picture,"  he  argued,  "a  picture  in  which  you  see  liv- 
ing men  and  women  and  hear  the  spoken  living  word." 
— "Men  and  women,"  cried  Margaret,  "making  an  in- 
decent exhibition  of  themselves.  Say  that  and  you  have 
said  all  you  need  to  say." — "Read  what  I  have  said, 
mother." — '"In  that  scoundrel's  paper?"  She  went  fur- 
ther. She  said : — "How  can  you  ever  offer  yourself  to 


SELINA  LESLIE  175 


a  good  woman,  coming  as  you  do  from  that  sink  of 
iniquity?  How  can  you  come  to  me,  your  mother?" — > 
Jamie  smiled  at  her  extravagance.  "Indeed,  mother,  I 
do  come  to  you  with  more  love  in  my  heart  for  what 
my  eyes  have  seen  and  my  ears  heard." — "Bah!  You 
talk  as  though  it  were  a  church." — "So  it  is  indeed,  a 
place  where  the  heart  can  be  glad." — "Lewd!"  she 
snapped.  "You  are  too  free,  Jamie,  free  in  your  talk 
and  in  your  doings.  You  are  changed  altogether  since 
you  left  the  mill  and  I  knew  how  it  would  be."  She 
took  refuge  in  tears. — "Oh !  Lord,"  he  said  to  himself. 
"What  does  she  think  a  man  is  made  of?  Stone? 
Putty?  Clay?  Why  won't  she  see  that  her  church  is 
only  a  kind  of  play-house;  mummery  without  paint,  a 
mummery  that  deadens  life  and  not  quickens  it."— "Oh ! 
mother,  mother,  mother,"  he  cried.  "Why  can't  you  let 
me  be?  I  am  what  I  am  and  you  are  no  longer  respon- 
sible for  me." — "I  am  responsible  for  you,"  she  said, 
"for  ever  and  ever;  responsible  to  the  sainted  dead  and 
before  God." — "By  whom  all  things  are  forgiven,"  he 
said  gently. — "Not  deliberate  wickedness,  not  a  wanton 
breach  between  a  mother  and  a  son." — "All  things," 
cried  he.  "What  authority  have  you  for  thinking  less?" 
— "I  feel  it,"  said  she  and  not  another  word  could  he 
get  out  of  her,  and  she  spent  the  evening  hunting  through 
the  Bible  for  texts  to  fortify  her  position.  She  was  in- 
exhaustibly ingenious  in  that  pursuit  and  Jamie,  know- 
ing that  he  would  be  routed  as  he  had  no  hope  of  finding 
a  text  in  support  of  dramatic  criticism,  left  her  to  it. 

All  the  same  these  disputes  with  his  mother  were  the 
profoundest  emotional  experiences  of  that  stage  of  his 
life  and  they  were  precious  to  her  too  and  she  had  far 
more  satisfaction  in  them  than  in  all  her  approbation  of 
Tom,  who  never  by  any  chance  did  anything  unexpected 


176  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

or  irregular,  or,   if  he  did,  kept  it  hidden,  even  from 
himself. 

Jamie  sought  out  Selina  Leslie  at  the  theatre.  He 
was  admitted  to  her  dressing-room,  for  the  management 
courted  him  and  always  forgave  his  unfavourable  com- 
ments in  the  hope  of  praise.  He  had  made  an  approving 
remark  of  Selina's  work  in  a  farce  and  she  had  been 
promoted.  She  welcomed  him  warmly : — "Been  in  front 
to-night,  Quint?" — '"No,  I  have  been  at  home." — 
"Home  ?"  She  made  a  face.  "No  place  like  it,  is  there  ?" 
— "Oh!  Are  you  wanting  to  go  back ?" — '"Not  I!  I've 
my  mother  to  come  and  see  me  and  that's  all  I  care  for, 
though  I  don't  like  my  father  treating  me  as  though  I'd 
gone  on  the  streets." — "He  doesn't  think  that  really." — 
"No.  He'd  die  if  he  did.  No,  he  wouldn't.  He'd  wash 
his  hands  of  me  and  be  holier  than  ever.  I  do  wish 
you'd  shave  those  whiskers  off,  Quint.  They  don't  suit 
you  a  bit." — "I  like  them.  I  like  to  sit  and  hear  them 
growing." — She  laughed:  "Don't  grow  a  moustache 
then.  I  wouldn't  have  you  hide  your  beautiful  mouth 
for  worlds.  You  are  a  treat  for  sore  eyes,  really,  and  I 
do  want  to  know  what  you've  done  to  yourself  because 
I  used  not  to  be  able  to  talk  to  you  at  all." — '"We  were 
both  so  young  and  both  afraid.  Besides  we  thought  we 
were  in  love  with  each  other  when  we  weren't  a  bit."- 
"How  do  you  know  that  ?"  Selina  had  fine  eyes  and  knew 
how  to  use  them.  Jamie  met  them  full  and  his  blood 
throbbed  in  his  heart. — "It's  true,"  he  said.  Selina 
was  satisfied  with  the  effect  she  had  produced  and  did 
not  press  the  matter  further. — "Shall  I  ever  be  an  ac- 
tress, Quint?" — "Yes,  for  comedy.  Broaden  out  a  bit." 
— "I'll  keep  my  figure  as  long  as  I  can." — "That  isn't 
what  I  meant:  coarsen  your  methods  and  you  would  be 
first-rate  in  farce  or  burlesque.  I  think  burlesque  is  what 


SELINA  LESLIE  177 


our  stage  is  best  in.  We've  lost  the  tragic  note." — 
"How  do  you  mean,  lost  it?" — "That  comes  clean  out 
of  the  human  heart  at  its  bravest,"  he  said.  "We  aren't 
brave  any  more.  We  have  lost  confidence." — "It  isn't 
such  a  rotten  world  as  all  that,"  said  Selina. — "Much 
you  know  about  it,  my  child." — "Child?  I'm  a  wicked 
woman.  What's  more,  I'm  going  to  be  wickeder."  And 
she  gave  a  little  dance,  that  was  indescribably  voluptu- 
ous, so  swift  and  subtle  was  the  flicker  of  defiance  and 
desire  in  it. — "You  wait,"  she  said,  "until  I  get  to  Lon- 
don. I  shall  set  my  cap  at  the  Prince  of  Wales,  poor 
lamb." — "Why  poor  lamb?"  asked  Jamie,  delighted  by 
this  audacious  flight. — "The  Prince  Consort  is  so  like  fa- 
ther," said  Selina.  "Can't  you  see  him  creeping  under 
the  royal  table  picking  up  crumbs?  I  think  father  must 
be  a  German  and  no  Scotchman." — "The  Scotch,"  said 
Jamie,  "are  the  only  Continental  inhabitants  of  these 
islands.  That  is  why  the  English  cannot  get  on  without 
them." — "I'm  English,"  said  Selina,  and  Jamie,  wanting 
to  rouse  the  devil  in  her  again,  said: — "And  you  can't 
get  on  without  me?" — "Well,"  said  Selina,  "it  would 
be  nice  if  I  took  you  to  London  with  me." — "And  what 
would  I  do  there?" — "Come  here,"  said  Selina.  He 
obeyed  and  she  made  him  stand  in  front  of  the  mirror 
with  his  face  next  to  hers. — '"There,"  she  said,  "London 
doesn't  often  see  a  couple  like  that." — "Your  face  looks 
crooked  to  me." — "So  does  yours  to  me.  Ha!  Ha! 
Ha!" — "And  I'd  be  a  dull  dog  for  you  to  drag  about 
with  you." — She  put  her  arm  round  his  neck: — "You 
are  rather  a  dull  old  darling,"  she  said,  and  kissed  him, 
and  in  a  moment  he  had  her  in  his  arms :  "Selina !  Se- 
lina!"— But  she  had  no  thought  of  surrender: — "Quiet! 
Quiet !"  she  whispered.  "There!  There!"  She  soothed 
him.  He  was  enraged  and  appalled  by  the  convulsion 


178  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

in  his  feelings,  and  broke  from  her.  At  the  door  he 
turned  and  saw  her  smile  at  herself  in  her  mirror.  O! 
the  brightness  of  her  eyes! — As  he  left  the  theatre  he 
said  to  himself : — "Felt  Alexander  so  ?  Was  it  so  that 
Antony  was  enchained  by  Cleopatra?" — It  was  no  re- 
lease of  his  emotions,  but  rather  a  confinement  of  them, 
and  he  in  whom  emotions  had  always  been  so  free,  so 
pure,  suffered.  It  was  torture.  What  his  mother  had 
said  of  the  theatre  seemed  to  him  now  not  a  whit  too 
extravagant.  It  had  magnified  Selina's  attraction  a  thou- 
sand times.  She  was  now,  for  him,  what  she  had  never 
been  in  his  life,  a  definite  and  dangerous  actuality.  He 
blamed  himself,  not  her.  It  was  he  who  had  admitted 
her,  encouraged  her.  The  danger  was  so  immense  that 
he  could  not  ignore  it.  Danger  to  her  too,  he  thought, 
in  his  ignorance  of  women  and  their  knowledge  of  their 
own  power  and  peril,  and  he  must  save  her.  The  obvious 
way  of  doing  it,  by  not  seeing  her  again,  never  crossed 
his  mind.  Saving  her,  whether  she  liked  it  or  not,  was 
a  positive  task  to  which  he  felt  himself  committed.  He 
even  prayed  to  the  God  of  the  church  for  assistance 
and  strength,  never  dreaming  that  the  God  of  the  bank 
was  much  more  to  Selina's  liking.  She  was  paid  very 
little  and  had  discovered  that  the  male  sex  had  deep  and 
well-lined  pockets  into  which  it  seemed  to  give  them 
pleasure  for  her  to  dip,  and  she  had  no  doubt  but  that 
Jamie,  being  a  Keith  and  a  friend  of  Hubert  Greig's,  had 
pockets  as  accommodating  as  any.  Also  he  was  better- 
looking  than  the  most  of  her  friends.  As  for  his  being 
in  love  with  her,  that  was  incidental.  She  could  hardly 
remember  a  time  when  she  had  not  had  some  man  more 
or  less  in  love  with  her  and  she  regarded  it  as  the  normal 
condition  of  a  young  woman's  existence.  Sometimes  she 
let  them  kiss  her;  sometimes  she  kissed  them;  such  flir- 


SELINA  LESLIE  179 


tation  kept  a  flickering  zest  in  her  life.  She  had  only 
one  determination — not  to  marry  a  man  like  her  father 
and  not  to  have  a  large  family.  She  did  not  imagine 
that  other  people's  lives  were  very  different  from  her 
own  or  that  the  men  she  met  would  desire  other  than 
to  stroll  into  and  out  of  her  gay  existence;  for  she  was 
extremely  happy  and  only  wished  to  avoid  trouble.  As 
for  Jamie,  he  was  still  something  of  the  hero  he  had  been 
to  her  as  a  child.  He  had  grown  very  big  and  strong 
and  pleasing  to  her  eyes.  He  had  left  bruises  on  her 
arms  and  she  surveyed  them  with  satisfaction  and  pressed 
them  until  they  hurt  her  for  the  pleasure  of  pain  com- 
ing from  him,  and  she  was  sorry  when  they  had  disap- 
peared. .  .  .  Some  months  before  Jamie's  visit,  a  star 
actor,  who  had  been  engaged  for  three  weeks  with  the 
company,  had  seduced  her  with  a  promise  that  she  should 
go  back  to  London  with  him.  He  did  not  keep  his 
promise  and  she  regretted  the  loss  of  the  opportunity 
more  than  that  of  her  virginity,  which  put  an  end  to  her 
curiosity  about  men  and  made  her  think  that  she  knew 
all  about  them. 

Jamie  took  some  weeks  to  think  out  the  problem 
she  had  introduced  into  his  life  and  did  not  go  near  her. 
Though  she  preferred  him  above  all  other  men  she  did 
not  allow  him  to  be  without  a  rival  and  encouraged  the 
attentions  of  a  new  addition  to  the  company,  a  strange 
pale  young  man,  named  Henry  Acomb,  who  was  the 
butt  of  all  the  actors  because  of  his  mannerisms,  and 
used  to  come  to  her  almost  in  tears  and  tell  her  what  a 
genius  he  had  and  how  they  would  one  day  be  on  their 
knees  to  him  when  he  had  all  London  at  his  feet.  He 
was  not  peculiar  in  his  convictions  but  only  in  his  frank- 
ness in  avowing  them,  and  though  he  was  often  ex- 
tremely tiresome  Selina  believed  in  him  and  was  sorry 


i8o  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

for  him.  He  used  to  inveigh  against  the  rest  of  the 
actors  for  accepting  the  disreputable  position  assigned 
to  them: — "Is  not  a  man  an  actor  by  virtue  of  the  fiery 
soul  within  him?  Is  not  he  in  himself  a  living  vision, 
noble  in  speech,  grand  in  gesture?" — Jamie  had  written 
words  of  warm  appreciation  of  Acomb's  strange  per- 
formances, and  the  actor  carried  them  about  with  him 
and  declared  that  Quintus  Flumen  was  the  only  man  in 
Thrigsby,  and  that  before  he  left  the  filthy  town  he 
would  like  to  shake  hands  with  him.  He  had  quarrelled 
with  Mr.  Wilcox,  but  when  he  learned  that  Mr.  Wilcox 
knew  Quintus  he  made  it  up  with  him  and  begged  for 
a  meeting  to  be  arranged.  Mr.  Wilcox  however  thought 
Acomb  an  intolerable  bore  and  a  dangerous  innovator- 
had  he  not  spoken  slightingly  of  Kemble? — and  would 
not  inflict  him  on  his  friend. 

However,  Acomb  had  his  desire  and  met  Jamie  in  Se- 
lina's  rooms  where  she  lived  under  the  wing  of  Mrs. 
Bulloch  who  played  Shakespearean  old  women  to  the 
life  because  she  was  a  Shakespearean  old  woman  in  her- 
self, though  a  most  respectable  party  and  a  most  excellent 
grandmother. — "My  dear,"  she  used  to  say  to  Selina, 
"if  I  wasn't  thinking  of  your  success  I  would  say  to 
you,  Don't  marry  in  the  profession.  It  isn't  marriage. 
It  is  a  perpetual  wondering  whose  bed  he  has  come  from. 
But  if  you  marry  outside  the  profession  then  it  is  all 
U.P.  and  you  won't  know  the  prompt  from  the  O.P. 
side  of  your  life.  But  a  good-looking  beau  like  that  Mr. 
Lawrie  is  a  temptation  to  any  girl,  if  only  to  keep  him 
safe  from  the  married  women." — -"Oh!  cheese  it, 
Aunty,"  said  Selina.  "He's  a  good  young  man  with  a 
mother  that  you'd  need  a  heart  of  brass  to  make  your 
in-law."— "Then  he's  a  parable,"  said  Mrs.  Bulloch,  "if 
he  is  good-looking  and  good." — She  had  only  seen  him 


SELINA  LESLIE  181 


at  the  theatre  and  now,  glancing  out  of  the  window,  she 
saw  him  coming  up  the  steps  and  gave  a  little  scream: 
"And  if  he  isn't  there  before  my  very  eyes,  and  barmy 
Henry  coming  to  tea  and  all." — '"My  mother  is  coming 
too." — "My  stars  and  little  fishes  if  it  ain't  a  party!  I 
must  squeeze  into  my  bombazine  though  it  does  burst 
open  at  my  bosom." — And  the  old  lady  trotted  upstairs. 
Selina  composed  herself  and  sat  with  her  hands  in 
her  lap  with  her  eyes  gazing  down  at  them.  Jamie  en- 
tered. He  was  tragical  and  solemn. — "Selina,"  he  said, 
"I  ought  not  to  have  come,  I  know,  but  I  felt  that  at 
least  I  must  ask  your  pardon." — '"Pardon?"  said  she, 
looking  up  at  him  and  causing  him  to  shake  in  his  reso- 
lution, which  was  to  denounce  himself  and  never  see  her 
again.  "Pardon  ?  Why  ?"—"!— I  kissed  you."— "So  you 
did  years  ago.  But  you  never  asked  my  pardon  then." — 
"That  was  different,  and  you  know  it." — "No.  I  don't 
think  I  do." — "Then  you — then  you '  He  strug- 
gled hard  against  the  realisation  being  forced  upon  him 
that  she  had  liked  it.  O !  he  must  save  her !  On  an  im- 
pulse he  said :  "I  want  to  ask  you  to  give  up  the  theatre 
and  then  I  will  m-marry  you." — Selina  rose  from  her 
chair  and  laid  her  arm  on  the  mantelpiece,  drooped  in  a 
dignified  attitude  and  asked  him  if  he  knew  what  he 
was  saying.  As  he  hardly  did  he  could  make  no  answer. 
He  had  been  giving  himself  a  terrible  time,  which  was 
more  credit  to  his  morals  than  to  his  good  sense,  and, 
as  usual,  he  had  complicated  his  condition  with  general 
ideas  and  had  borrowed  from  Hubert's  rooms  a  book 
by  Mary  Wollstonecraft  which  had  fired  his  idealism 
but  had  not  eased  his  real  difficulty,  namely,  that  Scotch- 
men who  come  to  England  to  make  careers  do  not  marry 
actresses.  He  had  evaded  it  by  putting  marriage  out 
of  the  question,  and  here  it  had  asserted  itself  when  it 


182  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

became  a  matter  of  making  an  honest  woman  of  Selina 
or  leaving  her  to  her  fate  stained  with  his  own  embrace. 
It  was  all  very  serious  to  him  and  he  could  not  but 
believe  it  was  equally  serious  to  Selina.  He  wanted  an 
answer  and  she  was  not  prepared  to  give  one.  Love  to 
her  was  a  matter  of  action,  of  active  enjoyment,  not 
of  words,  and  so  far  as  she  had  considered  Jamie's  ab- 
stention at  all,  she  had  put  it  down  to  his  liking  some- 
one else  better.  She  had  a  respect  for  him  and  his  pres- 
ent proposals  had  impaired  that.  He  on  his  part  had 
recoiled.  Marriage  was  a  thing  that  required  careful 
consideration  and  here  he  had  rushed  at  it  without  a 
thought.  In  spite  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft  he  could  not 
get  rid  of  this  notion  that  women  from  fifteen  to  forty- 
five  think  of  nothing  whatever  but  marriage.  He  had 
proposed  marriage  and  Selina  had  been  almost  shocked 
at  the  suggestion.  Perhaps  he  had  been  too  abrupt,  or 
lacking  in  chivalry.  Women,  he  thought,  must  be  sen- 
sitive in  these  matters.  But  then  he  had  kissed  Selina. 
He  floundered  into  worse  confusion. — "Damn  it  all,"  he 
cried  at  length,  "you  might  give  me  an  answer."  And 
Selina,  refreshed  and  relieved  by  this  vigorous  outburst, 
replied  sweetly:  "I'm  damned  if  I  do." — Jamie  dropped 
down  into  a  chair  as  though  she  had  pushed  him.  He 
gasped  in  his  astonishment  but  was  saved  more  by  the 
entrance  of  Mrs.  Leslie,  who,  seeing  him,  raised  her 
hands  in  delight,  darted  to  him,  kissed  him  on  both 
cheeks  and,  with  a  more  than  usually  shrill  giggle,  cried : 
"He!  He!  Jamie!  You  have  come  to  see  my  poor 
girl!  How  good  of  you!  How  kind  of  you!  She  has 
shown  me  the  nice  things  you  have  written  about  her, 
but  I  never  thought  you  would  come  to  see  her,  now  that 
you  are  so  rich  and  famous,  and  everybody  talking 
about  you  and  saying  how  rich  you  are  and  how  clever. 


SELINA  LESLIE  183 


People  do  forget  old  friends,  you  know,  and  it  is  no 
good  pretending  they  don't.     Not  that  I  would  blame 
anybody   about   poor   Selina.      When   her   own    father 
won't  let  her  name  pass  his  lips." — "Oh!  do  leave  the 
poor  man  alone,  mother,"  said  Selina. — '"I  am  sorry  to 
hear  that  of  Mr.  Leslie,"  said  Jamie.     "There  are  ex- 
ceptions even  among  women." — "He!    He!    Jamie,  that 
is  just  what  I  have  said  time  and  time  again.     If  you 
have  a  lot  of  children  one  of  them  is  sure  to  be  a  little 
mad." — '"Oh!  mother,  do  stop  talking.     Father  thinks 
if  a  person  goes  on  the  stage  she  gets  off  the  earth.    You 
don't  think  that.    Jamie  doesn't  think  that.    I  don't  think 
that." — "I  brought  you  some  shrimps  for  tea,"  said  Mrs. 
Leslie.     So  they  sat  down  to  the  table.     Mrs.  Bulloch 
joined  them  and  the  three  wromen  talked  Jamie  out  of 
his  confusion  into  a  rattling  gaiety.    They  talked  of  dress 
and  the  price  of  food,  of  disease  and  child-birth  and 
abortions,  and  Mrs.   Bulloch  cheerfully  told  the  most 
gruesome  tales.     Selina's  mamma  was  a  different  per- 
son: she  seemed  to  be  taking  a  holiday  from  her  gen- 
tility and  she  forced  her  mood  on  the  rest.     Mrs.  Bul- 
loch rejoiced  in  the  little  woman  and  said:    "It  is  easy 
to  see  where  Selina  gets  her  talent  from,  and  her  spirits. 
I  haven't  seen  such  spirits  since  my  brother  Joe  went 
off  to  the  German  wars  and  came  back  with  a  broken 
jaw  and  no  pension,  and  that  was  when  they  put  pota- 
toes in  the  bread  and  the  poor  Irish  had  nothing  to  eat." 
— Jamie  began  to  regret  that  he  had  been  so  solemn,  and 
was  afraid  that  he  had  for  ever  suppressed  Selina's  in- 
terest in  him.     She  never  once  looked  at  him  but  kept 
her  eyes  fixed  on  her  mother,  whom  presently  she  took 
upstairs  to  see  a  new  bonnet  she  had  bought.     Mrs.  Bul- 
loch ogled  Jamie,  and  he  grinned  at  her. — "Always," 
she  said,   "look  at  the  mother  when  you  are  thinking 


184  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

of  the  daughter." — "Mrs.  Leslie  is  an  old  friend  of 
mine,"  said  Jamie. — "A  fine  young  gentleman  like  you," 
said  Mrs.  Bulloch,  "doesn't  want  to  marry  into  the  pro- 
fession, though  if  you're  not  looking  at  it  in  the  mar- 
rying way  I'd  be  a  dragoon,  I  would." — Jamie  laughed 
and  said  he  did  not  think  Mrs.  Bulloch  could  ever  be 
very  terrifying. — "One  of  my  husbands  was  a  very  little 
man  and  scared  out  of  his  wits.  He  thought  I  should 
overlay  him  one  of  these  fine  nights.  A  warm  little 
feller  he  was  and  I  never  knew  him  go  to  bed  with  cold 
feet,  which  is  rare  among  men.  But  he  knew  what  the 
profession  was,  having  been  born,  like  Moses,  in  a  buck- 
basket,  on  the  road.  And  he  used  to  say,  the  profession 
has  its  ways  and  other  folks  have  their  ways  and  they'll 
no  more  mix  than  oil  and  water.  A  beautiful  girl  like 
Selina  must  have  her  beaux,  but  for  anything  serious,  or, 
which  is  more  important,  satisfactory,  she  must  look  to 
the  profession." 

It  was  then  that  Henry  Acomb  came  in  bearing  a 
large  bouquet.  When  he  knew  that  he  was  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Quintus  Flumen  he  was  so  touching,  so  profuse, 
so  eloquent  in  his  gratitude  that  he  drove  Jamie  from 
the  house  before  Selina  and  her  mother  had  returned. 
He  said :  "Your  writings  have  been  a  revelation  to  me. 
It  was  my  own  soul  speaking.  I  have  often  thanked 
God  for  Quintus  Flumen." — "Yes,  yes,"  replied  Jamie 
reaching  out  for  his  hat. — "We  must  meet  again,"  said 
Henry  Acomb. — "Often,  I  hope,"  replied  Jamie,  and  he 
shook  Mrs.  Bulloch's  hands.  She  followed  him  to  the 
door  and  said:  "You  mustn't  mind  him.  He's  a  fine 
actor  but  touched,  and  he  is  very  much  gone  on  Selina 
who  won't  have  a  word  to  say  to  him." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
JOHN'S  WEDDING 


THE  fat  man  who  had  urged  John  to  hear  John 
Bright  was  none  other  than  the  manager  of  Mur- 
doch's— a  regrettable  coincidence  which  no  true  novelist 
would  acknowledge,  but  as  it  had  its  influence  on  John's 
career  it  cannot  be  avoided.  It  helped  him  to  a 
firm  belief  in  minding  his  own  business,  and  this  led 
him  to  the  discovery  that  his  business  must  be  clear 
and  definite  or  there  was  no  minding  it.  What  was  his 
business?  To  make  money,  marry,  produce  sons  and 
put  them  in  the  way  of  making  themselves  distinguished. 
He  flung  himself  into  this  undertaking  with  a  cold  and 
irresistible  energy,  acclaiming  and  supporting  John 
Bright  because  the  reforms  advocated  by  that  great 
man  would  make  it  easier  for  him  and  men  like  him  to 
turn  their  abilities  into  gold.  When  he  was  twenty-two 
he  chose  his  wife,  and  at  twenty-six  he  married  her.  She 
had  a  fortune  of  six  thousand  pounds,  was  not  ill-look- 
ing and  shared  his  opinion  of  himself.  Other  qualities 
she  had  but  John  was  not  aware  of  them.  Her  father 
lived  near  the  Allison-Greigs  and  was  a  connection  of 
theirs  and  had  made  his  small  fortune  out  of  selling 
pictures  by  J.  M.  W.  Turner,  William  Etty  and  Madox 
Brown  to  Angus  Greig,  who,  though  he  understood  noth- 
ing about  art,  thought  it  proper  in  a  merchant  prince 

185 


i86  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

to  encourage  artists — financially,  if  not  socially.  Mr. 
Sykes  had  advised  the  corporation  of  Thrigsby  in  the 
institution  of  its  art  gallery  and  he  had  a  reputation. 
Wisely  he  retired  before  the  local  painters,  whom  he 
had  slighted,  began  to  assail  him,  persuaded  Angus  to 
build  a  museum  in  Westmoreland,  stocked  it  for  him  and 
with  the  proceeds  established  himself.  His  daughter's 
name  was  Sophia;  she  had  been  brought  up  to  believe 
in  great  men.  Angus  was  to  her  the  great  man,  her 
father  was  a  great  man  and  John  had  no  difficulty  in 
persuading  her  that  the  younger  generation  could  do 
even  better  in  that  line.  He  had  become  rhetorical,  had 
John,  and  would  tell  her  of  his  ambitions,  and  as  she  lived 
with  old  men  whose  ambitions  were  fulfilled  or  with 
young  men  who  had  none — for.  the  energy  of  the  Allison- 
Greigs  seems  to  have  been  exhausted  in  Angus — she 
needed  no  other  witchcraft.  Truth  to  tell  life  in  West- 
moreland all  the  year  round,  with  a  month  in  Thrigsby, 
was  more  than  a  little  dull.  John  used  to  say :  "I  shall 
use  my  money." — "How?"  Sophia  would  ask. — "When 
I  have  made  it  I  shall  develop  certain  ideas,  political 
probably.  I  shall  leave  them  to  my  sons  with  enough 
money  to  help  them  to  propagate  them.  I'm  not  going 
to  leave  my  sons  just  money  and  nothing  else.  Look  at 
the  Allison-Greigs." — Sophia  considered  the  Allison- 
Greigs,  who  were  indeed  amiable  but  aimless. — "Yes, 
John,"  said  Sophia.  "I  see  you  are  different." — "I  am 
that,"  said  John,  "and  I  hold  that  your  Keiths  and  your 
Greigs  are  on  the  wrong  track  altogether.  After  all  a 
man  owes  something  to  the  world  more  than  to  get  all  he 
can  out  of  it.  Get  all  you  can  out  of  it  certainly,  but 
give  something  back,  something  better." — "Yes,  indeed, 
John." — "He  owes  it  to  himself  to  win  honour  as  well 
as  fortune.  There's  no  monument  to  Angus  Greig,  and 


JOHN'S  WEDDING  187 

there'll  be  no  monument  to  Andrew  Keith.  I  mean, 
a  rich  man  must  be  a  benefactor." — "Oh!  John,  you 
do  have  beautiful  ideas,  but  cannot  a  poor  man  be  a 
benefactor?" — "Not  unless  he  is  a  genius,  and  I  would 
not  go  so  far  as  to  call  myself  that." — "No,  John." 

His  courtship  was  one  long  conversation  like  that, 
carried  on  over  years.  He  did  not  need  to  propose,  but 
slipped  into  the  position  of  future  son-in-law  in  Mr. 
Sykes'  house  and  was  free  to  go  there  whenever  he  liked. 
He  got  on  very  well  with  Mr.  Sykes,  who  used  to  amuse 
himself  with  inventing  railway  couplings  and  devices 
connected  with  steam-engines  for  which  John  used  to 
procure  the  iron  and  steel  cheap.  With  this  friendship 
John  was  able  to  conceal  the  real  object  of  his  visits  so 
that  it  came  as  a  surprise  to  his  brothers  when  he  an- 
nounced his  approaching  marriage;  his  mother  knew 
because  Maggie  knew,  and  had  told  Sophia  a  thing  or 
two  about  John  which  would  have  incensed  him  had  he 
known. — "God  bless  my  soul,"  said  Tom  when  the  news 
was  announced,  "I  don't  see  how  you  can  afford  it.  No 
man  worthy  of  the  name  would  live  on  his  wife's  money. 
Look  at  the  Prince-Consort."— "I  don't  see  why  he 
should  not,"  interrupted  Jamie,  looking  up  from  his 
book,  "if  he  loves  her." — "You're  a  romantic  fool,  Jamie. 
A  man  would  not  be  master  in  his  own  home  if  he  were 
under  an  obligation  to  the  woman." — "Is  not  every  man 
under  an  obligation  to  a  woman  for  his  birth?"  asked 
Jamie. — "Abominable  coarseness,"  muttered  Tom  who 
hated  arguing  because  he  was  a  poor  hand  at  it. — "I 
am  very  pleased,"  said  Margaret,  "though  I  think  you 
are  young  yet,  John,  and  might  have  waited  until  you 
had  a  real  position." — "Oh !  I'll  have  that,  mother,  don't 
you  be  afraid.  I've  got  my  foot  well  in  at  Murdoch's." 
— "Personally,"  said  Tom,  "I  made  up  my  mind  never 


i88  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

to  marry  until  the  three  of  us  had  been  able  to  establish 
mother  in  a  house  with  an  income  of  her  own.  I  sup- 
pose you'll  be  the  next,  Jamie." — '"Indeed,  no,"  said 
Jamie  with  a  blush  and  a  tremor  for  he  was  passing 
through  an  evil  time  and  Selina  was  having  her  way 
with  him.  "Indeed,  no.  I  think  I  shall  never  marry, 
but  I  hope  John  will  be  happy  and  not  despise  his  bache- 
lor brothers." — "He's  more  likely  to  envy  them,"  growled 
Tom.  "I  should  have  thought  Uncle  Andrew  was  warn- 
ing enough." — "Sophia,"  said  Margaret,  "is  almost  a 
member  of  the  family," — as  though  that  were  a  guaran- 
tee against  the  fate  of  Elizabeth. — "Oh !  well,"  said  Tom, 
"when  trade's  good  people  marry." — "And  when  it's 
bad?"  asked  Jamie  with  a  chuckle,  for  Tom  had  begun 
to  amuse  him  immensely. — "When  it's  bad,"  replied 
Tom,  "they  get  into  trouble." — Jamie  buried  his  head 
in  his  book.  Tibby  came  in  to  lay  the  supper. — "John's 
going  to  be  married,"  said  Margaret. — "On  Sophia?" 
asked  Tibby. — "It  is  Sophia,"  said  John,  "but  how  did  you 
know?"  — >"He  was  always  staying  with  those  Sykes," 
said  Tibby  and  her  eyes  moved  round  anxiously  to  Jamie. 
"You  look  anxious,"  he  said.  "Do  you  think  it  means 
the  break-up  of  the  family?" — "Marrying,"  said  Tibby, 
"is  catching." — "Then  Tom  had  better  look  out." 

Tom  snorted  and  took  his  stand  by  the  fireplace:  "I 
am  not,"  he  said,  "an  adherent  of  the  doctrines  of  laissez- 
faire,  thank  God.  If  I  were  head  of  the  family  I  should 
strongly  express  my  disapproval  of  this  marriage;  at 
least  until  John  had  produced  evidence  of  his  ability  to 
support  a  wife  in  a  position  worthy  of  the  family."- 
"As  you  are  not  head  of  the  family,"  retorted  John  with 
some  heat,  "you  can  only  express  a  personal  opinion  and 
for  that  I  do  not  care  a  brass  farthing.  Mr.  Sykes  is 
satisfied;  mother  is  satisfied;  I  am  satisfied." — Jamie  was 


JOHN'S  WEDDING  189 

roused :  "I  would  like  it  better,"  said  he,  "if  you  showed 
Tom  that  you  did  not  care  a  rap  for  the  family." — "But 
I  do  care,"  said  John,  "and  I  should  be  as  sorry  to  lose 
your  approval  as  I  would  be  if  I  were  ever  to  lose  my 
own  of  you." — "Fine  words  butter  no  parsnips,"  said 
Tom.  "Are  you  or  are  you  not  in  a  position  to  support 
a  wife  independent  of  her  means?" — '"I  am,"  replied 
John,  "or  I  would  not  be  getting  married." — "Then," 
said  Tom,  "I  should  like  to  know  how  you  have  done  it, 
for  /  could  not  have  married  at  twenty-five.  I  think 
you  should  insist,  Jamie,  on  having  some  evidence. 
/  for  one  will  not  support  his  children." — "They  will  be 
Sophia's  children  too,"  said  Margaret.  "She  will  surely 
always  have  plenty  of  money." — "Is  old  Sykes  making 
a  settlement?  And  who  are  to  be  the  trustees?" — "Oh! 
Let  it  be,  Tom,"  said  Jamie,  "that's  Sykes'  affair."— "It 
is  a  family  affair  and  should  be  on  a  business  footing. 
And  again,  will  John  or  will  he  not  contribute  to  the  fund 
after  he  is  married?  I  had  been  hoping  that  in  another 
two  years  we  should  be  able  to  pay  that  off." — "I'll  con- 
tinue my  contributions  of  course,"  said  John,  and  with 
that  Tom  was  appeased.  He  had  got  what  he  wanted. 
Jamie  was  uneasy.  John  had  always  a  way  of  mak- 
ing him  feel  unduly  adolescent  and  rather  absurd.  It 
was  just  like  John  to  be  the  first  to  marry ;  to  take  things 
into  his  own  hands  and  to  build  up  his  separate  life.  John 
seemed  able  to  assert  a  principle,  even  though  on  close 
scrutiny  it  should  not  appear  as  that  noble  Lawriean  prin- 
ciple of  his  dreams.  But  he  himself?  What  was  he 
asserting?  How  vague  and  indefinite  he  seemed.  He 
had,  it  is  true,  passionate  hours  with  Selina  which  made 
him  feel  magnificently  superior  to  his  brothers  whose 
souls  were  dry  and  meagre,  but  to  them  almost  every 
day  was  an  achievement,  bringing  them  nearer  to  the 


190  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

prosperous  existence  of  which  they  approved.  He  was 
himself,  to  all  appearances,  as  prosperous  as  they,  but 
he  had,  as  he  was  certain  they  had  not,  moments  of 
doubt,  moments  of  feeling  closely  confined  and  fierce 
impulses  to  break  out  and  proclaim  loudly  the  principle 
of  his  being  for  which  in  his  prosperity  there  seemed 
no  room. — >He  had  done  well  at  the  bank,  which  at  the 
moment  of  his  entering  it  had  been  threatened  by  the 
Thrigsby  and  District  which,  far  from  despising  small 
and  unrecommended  accounts,  had  opened  branch  after 
'branch  to  catch  the  savings  of  humble  and  small  people. 
He  had  drawn  up  a  report  on  the  doings  of  the  Thrigsby 
and  District,  that  upstart,  and  had  urged  Mr.  Rigby  Blair 
to  enter  into  competition.  Success  had  attended  his 
efforts  and  promotion  had  followed  them.  It  was  under- 
stood that  he  would  one  day  step  into  Mr.  Blair's  shoes. 
This  was  gratifying  and  his  better  position  gave  him  a 
wide  outlook  for  his  researches  into  the  anatomy  of 
Thrigsby  which  he  found  both  more  repulsive  and  more 
fascinating.  His  mother  was  pleased  with  him,  as  she 
was  with  all  her  sons.  Her  adventure  had  led  to  triumph 
and  a  security  which  she  imagined  nothing  could  shake. 
It  was  precisely  that  security  that  Jamie  dreaded.  It 
depended,  he  knew,  entirely  on  money,  and  in  money  the 
Lawriean  principle  could  not  find  expression.  John  was 
much  nearer  to  it  in  marrying. — Then  came  the  teasing 
thought  of  Selina.  O!  there  the  principle  could  have 
been  expressed  had  there  been  no  bank,  no  family,  no 
Uncle  Andrew,  no  Thrigsby,  no  need  to  eat,  drink  and 
be  fed  and  housed.  Selina  was  a  figure  of  carnival,  of 
gay  clothes  and  masks,  of  throbbing  violins  and  merry 
songs,  and  all  the  rest  of  life  was  heavy  and  Lenten. 
Even  John's  marriage  was  Lenten  and  at  once  Jamie 
was  against  it.  Women,  he  thought,  had  no  place  in 


JOHN'S  WEDDING  191 

that  drab  world,  and  no  shadow  from  it  should  fall 
upon  their  lives:  the  shadow  of  death  and  the  torment 
of  child-birth  for  them  but  not  the  smoked  ruins  of 
dull  care.  Women  were  to  his  idealism  splendid  beings 
who  could  look  after  themselves,  for  they  seemed  to 
him  to  have  a  mysterious  sure  knowledge  of  life.  His 
mother,  for  instance,  was  never  far  out  in  her  estimate 
of  things  and  people ;  Selina  held  the  key  to  a  world  of 
enchantment ;  and  Tibby  was,  as  is  known,  a  witch.  But 
the  disturbing  influence  in  his  life,  the  source  of  his  dis- 
satisfaction, was  Mrs.  Bulloch  with  whom  on  Sunday 
afternoons  he,  used  to  go  to  play  cribbage.  She  loved 
her  game  of  cribbage,  and  so  did  he,  but  most  he  loved 
the  old  woman's  rude  wit  and  wisdom.  Though  he 
did  not  know  it,  Selina  was  no  more  than  a  by-product 
of  this  enjoyment  and  a  seasoning  in  it.  And  it  was 
Mrs.  Bulloch's  wisdom  in  him  that  made  him  disapprove 
of  John's  project.  It  seemed  to  him  cold-blooded  and 
calculating. 

However,  when  the  time  came  for  the  wedding  he 
and  Tom  got  out  their  top-hats  and  Prayer  Books,  donned 
their  best  broadcloth  frock-coats,  bought  their  mother 
a  new  black  silk,  and  a  bonnet  with  white  flowers  in  it, 
the  first  headgear  she  had  worn  for  years  that  did  not 
proclaim  her  widowhood.  Mary  came  from  Edinburgh 
and  Tibby  was  only  present  in  John's  mind,  for  she  had 
visited  him  a  day  or  two  before  and  stood  for  a  long 
time  silent  and  mysterious.  Then  she  had  said : — "Are 
you  pleased  to  be  married,  John?" — "I  am,"  said  he. — 
"You  don't  look  it." — He  said  nothing,  for,  like  the 
rest,  he  was  rather  afraid  of  Tibby  and  used  to  the 
strange  inquisition  she  used  every  now  and  then  to  sub- 
mit them  to. — "Is  she  a  bonny  girl — Sophia?"  John 
produced  a  daguerreotype  of  his  betrothed. — "Aye,  she's 


192  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

bonny  and  a  tender  young  thing.  She'll  need  lovering, 
John." — "Why  would  I  be  marrying  her  else,  Tibby?" 
— "It  was  Andrew  Keith  I  had  in  mind,  John.  Love's 
an  easy  word  to  say  but  a  hard  thing  to  practise." — "Oh ! 
Ho!  Are  you  in  love,  Tibby?" — "I?  With  my  face? 
Love's  for  the  pretty  ones." — ''I'm  not  pretty,  Tibby." 
— "No.  It  isn't  only  faces  that  are  pretty.  Have  a 
care  to  it,  John,  or  I'll  haunt  you,  ugly  as  I  am."  And 
John  felt  unpleasantly  like  a  child  being  chidden  by  its 
nurse.  That  was  Tibby's  way.  There  was  no  hoaxing 
her,  or  making  her  take  you  at  your  own  value.  She 
could  put  her  finger  on  your  emotional  centre  so  that  your 
mind  for  one  brief  horrid  moment  would  become  a  chart 
of  your  mental  and  spiritual  condition.  For  a  flash  John 
felt  ashamed  of  himself,  but  immediately  he  persuaded 
himself  that  his  shame  was  decent  humility  and  natural 
fear  before  the  sacrament  of  marriage.  Like  many  an- 
other he  was  persuaded  that  because  it  was  he  who  was 
going  to  be  married,  therefore  his  marriage  was  par- 
ticularly holy  and  would  receive  especial  attention  from 
the  Deity.  This  idea  became  a  conviction  in  Westmore- 
land when  he  saw  the  elaborate  preparations  that  had 
been  made  and  the  formidable  assembly  of  Keiths  and 
Greigs  and  Allison-Greigs.  If  only  Tibby  had  not  said 
what  she  had,  though  exactly  what  she  had  said  he  could 
not  remember!  But  during  the  service  when  he  was 
nervous  and  wrought  up  Tibby  was  very  much  more 
real  a  figure  to  him  than  the  little  white  figure  by  his 
side.  In  a  dream  he  signed  the  register,  in  a  dream  he 
walked  out  of  the  church  with  Sophia  on  his  arm,  and 
in  a  waking  nightmare  he  drove  with  her  over  to  Keswick 
where  they  were  to  spend  their  honeymoon.  He  was 
not — alas!  that  it  has  to  be  recorded  in  a  work  written 
in  English — a  stranger  to  woman,  but  his  wife  was  not 


JOHN'S  WEDDING  193 

in  his  ordinary  sense  a  woman  and  he  was  afraid  of 
her.  He  disguised  his  fear.  Clasping  Sophia's  hand, 
he  told  her  that  he  was  especially  fond  of  kidneys  for 
breakfast  and  that  Murdoch's  had  raised  his  salary  in 
consideration  of  his  marriage.  From  that  he  returned 
to  his  ambitions,  and,  at  last,  as  they  reached  Keswick, 
he  told  Sophia  that  she  looked  very  pretty  and  that  he 
was  proud  to  call  her  his  wife.  So  much  tenderness  she 
had  not  had  from  him  before  and  she  turned  her  face 
to  him  and  they  kissed.  His  fear  of  her  died  and  he 
felt  that  he  had  done  well. 

Meanwhile  at  the  Donald  Greigs',  where  the  guests 
had  foregathered,  Mary  was  delighting  in  Jamie.  They 
escaped  together  and  went  for  a  long  walk  over  the  fells. 
It  was  March.  A  blustering  north-west  wind  was  blow- 
ing, gusty  blizzards  came  every  now  and  then,  the  snow 
lying  on  the  cold  sodden  ground. — "By  God,"  said  Jamie, 
"I  am  glad  to  see  you." — "It  was  a  comic  wedding,"  said 
Mary.  "All  weddings  are  either  comic  or  tragic.  Yours 
would  be  tragic." — '"Why?" — '"Because  you  are  a  tragic 
man.  I  was  shocked  when  I  saw  your  face  at  first,  but 
I  love  it  now.  A  man's  face  should  show  the  life  behind 
it.  Are  you  happy?" — "Dod,  that's  a  funny  question. 
I'd  never  ask  it  of  myself." — "Perhaps  it  is  foolish. 
What  I  really  meant  was,  I  think,  are  you  you?" — That 
beat  Jamie  and  he  did  not  know  what  she  meant  though 
he  had  no  doubt  of  the  affection  behind  her  words.  He 
said :  "I  hope  you're  getting  the  life  you  ought  to  have." 
— "I  ?  Oh,  yes.  I  have  my  friends  and  I  work  very 
hard." — "What  friends?" — -"Men  mostly.  I'm  glad  not 
to  have  left  Scotland.  I  couldn't  have  found  such  friends 
in  England.  That  has  made  me  afraid  for  you." — "I 
have  my  friends  too." — "Mostly  women?" — "No.  Why 
should  you  think  that?  Men:  all  sorts.  The  best  of 


194  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

them  are  slightly  disreputable.  Why  is  that,  do  you 
think?" — Said  Mary:  "Because  they  are  not  so  self- 
satisfied."— "That's  it!"  said  Jamie— "And  mother  ?"- 
"She's  satisfied  enough.  Didn't  you  see  her  treating  the 
Allison-Greigs  as  though  they  were  dirt?"-  -"Is  Tom 
going  to  marry  Agnes?" — Jamie's  heart  leaped  on  that, 
then  turned  to  stone. — "Tom?"  he  said.  Mary  did  not 
catch  the  incredulous  gasp  in  his  tone  and  went  on  com- 
placently :  "I  saw  it  at  once." 

Tom  ?  Tom  and  Agnes.  The  thought  melted  Jamie's 
bowels.  Agnes  had  always  been  to  him  a  figure  of  un- 
earthly loveliness.  Deep  in  his  heart  there  had  lain  the 
hope  that  some  day  he  might  unearth  in  life  some  beauty 
that  he  might  lay  before  her,  and  with  an  immense  pa- 
tience he  had  been  watching  and  waiting  for  the  miracu- 
lous growth  in  himself  which  should  make  him  of  a 
stature  and  a  strength,  if  necessary,  to  wrest  that  beauty 
from  life.  All  else  had  been  insignificant;  all  other  hap- 
penings had  been  superficial :  he  had  been  pregnant  in 
soul  with  the  idea  of  Agnes  and  nothing  else  he  had 
known  in  life  could  aid  him  or  deliver  him  of  it.  Tears 
blinded  his  eyes.  The  keen  wind  came  rushing  across 
the  hills  and  slapped  his  face.  His  blood  raced  in  an 
agony.  He  was  torn  out  of  his  brooding,  the  long  brood- 
ing of  years  upon  that  sweet  possession  of  his  soul,  and 
the  whole  world  in  its  violent  energy  called  him  fool. 
He  would  not  have  Agnes  to  be  woman:  not  such  a 
woman  as  Tom  might  know. — "O,  Mary,  Mary!  You 
to  deal  me  such  a  hurt !" — That  was  his  inward  cry  and 
at  once  it  turned  to  the  most  bitter  and  rending  laughter. 
It  seemed  to  him  then  that  his  life  had  begun  and  ended 
in  one  moment.  Its  one  flower  had  been  trampled  under- 
foot in  the  cold  sodden  ground,  in  the  snow. — 'Followed 
a  melancholy  sensation  of  understanding  everything,  the 


JOHN'S  WEDDING  195 

delicious  absurdity,  the  tragic  unending1  futility  of  the 
world  that  has  its  being  in  the  birth  and  death  of  its 
desires,  ecstasy  and  ruin. — Mary  said: — "I'm  going  to 
Berlin,  soon,  in  a  month  or  two." — "For  long?" — "It 
might  be  for  years." — Jamie  understood  her.  He  found 
comfort  in  that.  The  world  may  be  futile  but  human 
beings  have  comradeship  to  defend  themselves  against 
its  futility.  He  understood  her.  She  too  had  her  sorrow. 
— "I'm  sorry  he  will  not  have  ye,  wee  Mary." — 'She 
smiled  awry:  "It's  not  for  want  of  asking,"  she  said. 
"I'm  clever  enough  for  him  but  he  would  like  a  big 
woman,  that  would  just  keep  him  warm  and  settle  his 
nerves." — "Is  he  a  great  man?" — "He's  more  than  that," 
said  Mary.  'He's  a  teacher  and  a  seer." — Jamie  laughed : 
"It's  queer,"  he  said,  "to  think  of  me  in  a  bank  counting 
money  and  you  living  with  the  salt  of  the  earth." — 
"There's  not  much  Napoleon  about  you  now,  Jamie." — 
"Deed,  no.  I  think  Napoleon  must  have  been  a  boy 
always.  They  do  a  deal  of  harm  those  men  who  keep 
the  genius  of  a  child  through  the  affairs  and  doings  of 
a  man." — i"I  wish  you  were  not  in  a  bank,  Jamie.  You 
ought  to  be  writing." — "In  Thrigsby?  You  don't  know 
Thrigsby."— "Then  leave  it?"— "And  mother?  I  could 
not  do  that.  I'm  the  head  of  the  family." — "There's 
Tom." — "I  will  not  leave  that  or  anything  to  Tom.  And' 
— change  the  subject,  please." 

He  kept  her  walking  for  hours.  The  snow  lay  thick. 
They  lost  their  way.  He  was  afraid  to  go  back,  would 
not  go  until  Agnes  and  her  family  would  have  left  the 
Donald  Greigs'. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

AGNES    OF   THE    LAKE 


JAMES  and  Mary  walked  above  ten  miles  over 
rough  ground  but  when  they  returned  Agnes  had 
not  gone.  She  had  set  herself  to  please  Margaret  who 
was  on  her  first  visit  to  the  mansions  of  the  clan  Greig, 
having  always  refused  to  go  before  until  her  sons  were 
on  an  equality  with  their  rich  kinsmen.  She  had  thought 
that  John's  marriage  would  mark  their  arrival  at  that 
desired  point  and  she  was  disappointed.  John  after 
all  had  only  married  the  daughter  of  a  dependent  of  the 
Greigs,  and  so,  it  seemed  to  her,  had  "done  for  him- 
self" as  completely  as  when  he  had  crossed  fingers  with 
his  Uncle  Andrew.  It  was  not  the  wedding  a  Greig 
young  woman  would  have  had :  there  were  subtle  and 
stealthy  economies;  there  were  few  guests  outside  the 
family;  the  wedding  feast  was  second-rate — only  three 
kinds  of  wine.  So  Margaret  was  affronted  and  stiffened 
herself,  finding  her  only  comfort  in  the  thought  that  she 
had  refused  the  assistance  of  the  Greigs  in  the  time  of 
her  first  difficulties.  She  had  not  for  years  looked  so 
inexorable  a  widow,  and  she  alarmed  and  distressed  the 
Greigs  who  tried  one  after  another  to  talk  to  her  and  to 
charm  her.  Only  Agnes  was  persistent.  Tom  had  pro- 
posed to  her  that  day  for  the  third  time,  and  though  she 
had  refused  him  she  was  interested  in  him  and  appreciated 

196 


AGNES  OF  THE  LAKE  197 

his  force  of  character.  She  was  alarmed  by  him  and 
her  life  had  always  been  so  secure  that  she  liked  being 
alarmed.  She  was  adored.  It  was  the  tradition  in  the 
family  to  adore  Agnes.  Old  Angus  had  worshipped  her 
when  she  was  a  child.  She  had  been  his  "wee  wifie," 
and  he  used  in  his  last  years  to  write  to  her  every  morn- 
ing and  visit  her  every  afternoon.  Easily  and  gracefully 
she  had  accepted  the  almost  divine  position  accorded  her 
by  the  Greigs  and  suffered  for  it  in  finding  herself  near 
completely  inaccessible  to  strangers.  It  was  difficult  for 
her  to  deal  with  people  who  did  not  approach  her  with 
homage.  But  for  Tom  she  could  not  have  attempted  to 
engage  the  stern  Margaret.  Tom  was  rough  in  his  woo- 
ing: direct  and  business-like.  He  wanted  a  Greig  for 
his  wife  and  tried  to  bring  down  the  highest  flier.  Agnes' 
refusal  had  at  first  shocked  him.  He  had  not  imagined 
that  men,  successful  men,  were  refused.  When  he  tried 
again  with  no  better  luck  the  excitement  of  sport  entered 
into  the  affair.  He  would  stalk  his  quarry.  Agnes  had 
never  been  stalked  before.  Her  usual  refusal  was  taken 
by  her  wooers  as  gently  as  it  was  given.  They  were 
left  so  immensely  and  deliciously  sorry  for  themselves 
as  almost  to  thank  God  they  had  not  been  accepted.  One 
or  two,  to  be  sure,  said  that  Agnes  was  cold,  but  only 
as  poets  call  the  moon  so  in  their  thankfulness  that  there 
is  some  relief  from  the  heat  of  the  sun.  Tom  on  the 
other  hand  did  not  think  about  Agnes  at  all,  except  that 
he  wanted  her  and  meant  to  have  her  to  reach  the  next 
stage  in  his  career.  He  was  inclined  to  agree  with  his 
mother  that  John  had  lowered  himself  and  the  family, 
but  then  John  always  had  shown  Radical  tendencies. 
Indeed  Tom  had  begun  to  feel  that  the  future  depended 
upon  him;  John  seemed  to  have  no  pride,  while  Jamie 
with  his  soft  shilly-shallying  and  his  literary  fal-lals 


THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 


might  be  an  ornament  but  was  almost  certainly  a  dead 
weight.  Agnes  turned  Lawrie  would  ensure  the  future ; 
nothing  could  then  impinge  upon  it.  This  lack  of  per- 
sonal interest — though  Agnes  had  some  beauty  and  was 
from  the  lower  and  merely  human  point  of  view  satis- 
factory— gave  Tom  a  terrible  energy,  against  which 
Agnes  protected  herself  with  aloofness  and  by  putting 
on  an  extra  layer  .of  clothes,  as  though  the  more  effec- 
tively to  hide  from  her  suitor  the  woman  beneath  them. 
She  was  almost  as  heavily  and  stiffly  draped  as  Mar- 
garet, so  that  Tom  hardly  noticed  any  difference 
between  her  and  his  mother.  She  was  to  be  his  wife; 
that  was  beyond  doubt.  Wife  and  mother  were  respect- 
able terms,  almost  awful,  having  nothing  at  all  to  do 
with  womanhood.  Like  the  word  lady  they  could  lift 
a  woman  out  of  the  morass  in  which  otherwise  she  would 
be  lost,  and  gave  her  a  position  in  society.  These  three 
words  marked  stages;  to  be  a  lady  was  to  be  discernible 
and  calculable;  however  attached  to  wifehood,  mother- 
hood provided  justification;  a  man  could  recognise  the 
mother  of  his  sons:  he  could  let  her  feel  that -he  was 
pleased  with  her;  spontaneously  and  not  in  response  to 
her  charms  of  cajolery.  How  far  Agnes  was  aware  of 
this  philosophic  system  which  governed  Tom's  wooing 
of  her  it  is  impossible  to  say.  She  would  smile  most 
sweetly  when  she  thought  of  him,  but  if  she  had  any 
feeling  she  did  not  betray  herself.  There  is  a  letter 
of  hers  written  to  her  dearest  friend  to  whom  she  says : 
"It  is  not  such  an  honour  as  he  thinks  it  is," — but  she 
may  not  have  been  referring  to  Tom. — She  was  certainly 
a  lady,  but  was  as  certainly  romantic,  chivalrous  and 
charitable  and  she  liked  a  quick  mind  in  a  man.  Tom 
had  vigour,  but  he  lacked  agility.  If  only  she  could 
have  roused  him  she  would  have  found  him  more  satis- 


AGNES  OF  THE  LAKE  199 

fying.  She  wanted  to  find  out  what  his  mother  thought 
of  him,  but  not  even  to  serve  her  son  would  Margaret 
give  herself  away.  Agnes  kept  her  in  the  hall,  the  great 
ugly  hall  filled  with  the  pictures  and  bric-a-bracs  pur- 
chased by  Sophia's  father  for  Angus,  and  submitted  her 
for  three  hours  to  a  gentle  cross-examination.  Was  she 
not  proud  to  have  three  such  fine  sons? — "Not  a  sinful 
pride,"  said  Margaret. — "Surely  a  .  mother  may  have 
pride  without  being  sinful." — "As  to  that,"  replied  Mar- 
garet, "I  have  my  disappointments.  It  was  a  sad  blow 
to  me  when  John  went  out  of  the  family.  I  had  been 
wanting  them  all  to  be  partners  together.  The  Greigs 
did  it,  but  John  was  always  headstrong  and  impatient. 

His  haste  to  be  married  was  almost Er,  hum." — 

"You  are  so  like  dear  Cousin  Andrew,"  said  Agnes.  "I 
see  it  in  Tom  too." — "I  hope,"  said  Margaret,  "John  has 
arranged  a  satisfactory  settlement  with  his  father-in- 
law,  but,  of  course,  he  has  said  nothing  about  it  to  me." 
— That  was  another  grudge  of  Margaret's ;  having  made 
an  almost  runaway  match  with  her  Thomas  there  had 
been  no  question  of  settlements  in  her  case,  and  since 
John's  announcement  of  his  betrothal,  her  thoughts  had 
been  running  on  the  subject.  Her  case,  she  thought, 
was  singular;  she  could  carry  off  a  marriage  without 
settlements,  but  it  was  not  a  thing  to  have  repeated  in  a 
younger  and  weaker  generation. — "And  when,"  she  said, 
"are  we  to  have  the  pleasure  of  hearing  of  your  wedding, 
my  dear?" — "The  Greigs,"  answered  Agnes,  "do  not 
marry  easily." — "Some  young  London  gentleman,  I  sup- 
pose," said  Margaret,  for  the  Greigs  spent  two  months 
of  the  year  in  London.  "I  find  it  so  hard,"  sighed  Agnes, 

"to  forget  my  grandfather.    All  other  men He  had 

thoughts,  you  see,  and  such  deep  feelings." — "Scotch," 
said  Margaret.  "We  have  feelings,  but  they  are  sacred. 


200  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

We  do  not  talk  of  them." — So  their  conversation  ran 
on,  neither  being  able  to  pin  the  other  down,  until  they 
had  chafed  each  other  into  an  irritation,  and  Margaret 
decided  in  her  own  mind  that  Agnes  was  a  prig  and 
purse-proud,  and  Agnes  had  concluded  that  her  dear 
cousin  was  stupid  and  arrogant. 

Tom  joined  them  presently  and  was  overjoyed  to  see 
his  mother  and  his  future  bride  so  much  interested  in 
each  other  that  nothing  could  separate  them.  He  said 
as  much.  He  drew  himself  up  in  an  Andrewish  attitude 
by  the  fireplace  under  the  snarling  head  of  an  otter  which 
had  been  killed  in  the  back  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden. 
He  hum'd  and  ha'd  and  picked  his  words  saying:  "I 
hope  I  don't  intrude,  but  it  is  such  a  pleasure  to  me  to  see 
you  two  together.  I  can  almost  imagine  we  were  at  home 
in  Murray  Street,  my  mother  sitting  by  the  fire,  and 
you,  Agnes,  come  to  visit  us,  as  I  hope  you  will,  one  day." 
— "Agnes  smiled :  "I  might,"  she  said.  "I  would  like  to. 
I  often  feel  it  is  a  shame  that  we  should  have  left 
Thrigsby  which,  after  all,  keeps  us  alive." — '"That's  what 
I  say,"  said  Tom.  "If  you  make  money  out  of  a  place 
you  owe  something  to  it.  Look  at  Uncle  Andrew.  Never 
budged  from  Clibran  Hall,  though  the  district  is  fast 
going  down-hill  and  there  will  soon  be  factories  all  round 
his  garden.  Yes,  Agnes,  you  must  come  back  to  the 
workers.  We  are  no  longer  feudal.  We  do  not  live  by 
service.  We  are  free  Britons.  Every  man  for  himself 
is  the  law  now." — "Tom,"  said  his  mother,  "don't  make 
a  fool  of  yourself.  That  is  not  the  law  and  nothing  like 
it.  The  Ten  Commandments  are  the  law."  Tom  went 
white  with  rage.  He  had  been  pleased  with  himself. 
Not  knowing  the  irritation  from  which  Margaret  was 
suffering,  she  seemed  to  him  an  unaccountable  and  inso- 
lent old  woman. — "It  is  at  any  rate  the  law  in  business," 


AGNES  OF  THE  LAKE  201 

he  smiled.  He  looked  very  like  the  otter  and  Agnes 
began  to  be  afraid  of  him,  and  was  surprised  to  find  her- 
self saying:  "Of  course,  commerce  has  made  a  differ- 
ence."— "That,"  said  Tom,  "is  what  I  have  never  been 
able  to  make  my  mother  understand."  Margaret  was 
not  going  to  lose  her  victory  and  she  added  as  she  rose 
with  a  swish  of  her  skirts : — "It  does  not  take  you,  Tom, 
to  teach  me  how  many  beans  make  five,  and  success  in 
business  does  not  absolve  a  man  from  his  duty  to  his 
parents."  Tom  was  very  angry.  He  was  cutting  a  poor 
figure  in  front  of  Agnes,  with  whom  he  had  thought  his 
mother  would  help  him.  Talk  of  saving  the  family! 
She  was  as  dense  as  Jamie  and  as  incapable  of  seeing 
which  side  of  her  bread  was  buttered.  He  remembered 
with  a  cold  shiver  his  mother's  trick  of  talking  of  them 
as  though  they  were  still  children.  What  might  she  not 
have  told  Agnes?  How  he  was  very  proud  of  his  long 
aristocratic  feet  and  kept  his  toe-nails  very  carefully, 
perhaps!  She  was  quite  capable  of  it. — "Aren't  you 
going  to  lie  down  before  supper,  mother?  You  must 
be  tired." — "I  am  not  tired,  and  I  cannot  sleep  in  a 
strange  bed." — '"Would  you  like  me  to  read  to  you?" 
asked  Agnes,  relieved  at  the  passing  of  the  strain.  "She 
hates  being  read  to,"  jerked  Tom. — "I  think,"  said  Mar- 
garet, "I  prefer  my  own  company."  And  she  sailed 
away  to  Mrs.  Donald's  boudoir  which  had  been  placed 
at  her  disposal. 

Tom  was  left  speechless.  How  to  explain?  How  to  re- 
cover the  lost  ground?  He  did  not  know  how  much 
ground  he  had  lost.  He  swung  his  right  leg  and  stroked 
his  chin,  but  not  a  word  could  he  say.  Agnes  smiled, 
smoothed  out  her  skirts  and  waited.  Tom  had  always 
been  so  confident ;  his  present  furious  anxiety  was  a  wel- 
come change.  At  last  to  help  him  out  she  said:  "She 


202  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

is  such  a  character,  such  a  fine  character." — Tom  mut- 
tered :  "She  is  simply  incomprehensible.  I  have  been  a 
good  son  to  her,  and  she  behaved  like  that,  almost  rudely, 
to  you." — "Perhaps,"  replied  Agnes,  "perhaps  she  is  shy, 
or  perhaps  she  is  feeling  the  loss  of  your  brother." — "She 
is  disappointed,  I  know.  It  is  not  the  marriage  any  of 
us  would  have  chosen  for  him." — "But  Sophia  is  the 
dearest  child." — "We  Lawries,"  cried  Tom,  "are  ambi- 
tious. We  aim  always  at  the  highest." — '"Perhaps,"  said 
Agnes,  "your  brother  could  see  no  higher." — "Ah!"  said 
Tom  gallantly,  "but  I  do.  I  see  myself — I  see  myself— 

er "    He  caught  Agnes'  eye  and  became  tongue-tied 

again.     "I  see  myself " — "Yes?"  asked  she  sweetly. 

— "That's  enough,"  he  snarled,  his  fury  returning.  "I 
will  put  up  with  things  from  my  mother  that  I  will  not 
stand  from  you.  I  asked  you  this  morning  if  you  would 
marry  me.  You  said  'No.'  I  ask  you  now.  Will  you 
marry  me,  and  your  answer  shall  be " 

He  was  not  allowed  to  finish  for  Mary  entered  the 
room  and  sat  by  Agnes  taking  her  hand  in  hers.  She 
looked  up  at  her  brother  and  said:  "Go  on,  Tom."- 
Agnes  clutched  Mary's  hand  tight  and  squeezed  it.  She 
had  nearly  been  frightened  into  giving  Tom  the  answer 
he  desired. — "Go  on,  Tom.  Were  you  making  a  speech  ?" 
— ""I  was  saying,"  said  he,  "that  the  Lawries  are  ambi- 
tious."— "They  are  always  convinced  that  they  are  in 
the  right." — "Oh !  dear,"  said  Agnes,  "so  are  the  Greigs." 
— >"We  generally  are  right,"  observed  Tom,  "but  our 
women-folk  will  never  listen  to  us." — "Perhaps,"  said 
Mary,  "they  like  to  be  wrong  for  a  change." — "You  may 
laugh,"  replied  Tom.  "You  may  regard  me  as  a  fool, 
if  you  like,  but  I  know  what  I  am  doing  and  I  mean  to 
do  it." 

He  was  fascinated  by  the  sight  of  Agnes'  white  hand 


AGNES  OF  THE  LAKE  203 

in  Mary's.  It  looked  as  though  they  would  never  be 
separated.  He  was  going  back  in  the  morning.  He  might 
not  have  another  opportunity.  He  decided  to  lie. — 
"Mother  was  asking  for  you,  Mary." — '"Was  she?  I 
expect  she  has  found  Maggie  by  now." — "Maggie  is  out 
dining  with  Mrs.  Donald." — "Jamie  came  in  with  me. 
He  has  gone  to  look  for  her." — "I  was  having  a  most 
interesting  conversation  with  Agnes." — He  saw  Agnes 
press  Mary's  hand  and  draw  it  towards  her.  Those 
women!  These  abominable  women!  Was  a  man  noth- 
ing but  a  joke  to  them?  Had  they  no  feeling?  No 
sense  of  proportion?  Could  they  not  see  that  a  man's 
schemes  for  his  future  were  of  vital  importance  ?  Little 
plain  Mary  made  Agnes  look  superb  and  beautiful.  Tom 
drew  himself  up  to  his  full  height  and  felt  that  he  was 
a  man  of  whom  she  was  worthy.  He  had,  he  believed, 
a  strong  face,  but  these  women  seemed  able  to  baffle 
strength.  Let  them  wait.  They  should  see.  Once  mar- 
ried to  him,  Agnes  should  feel  his  strength.  Mary  said : 
"I  shall  not  see  Agnes  again  for  years.  You  are  never 
so  far  away.  Was  he  being  so  very  interesting,  Agnes?" 
— "I  was  not,"  said  Tom.  "I  keep  my  brains  for  my 
business.  Are  you  staying  to  supper,  Agnes?" — "No. 
I  promised  I  would  be  at  home." — '"Then  perhaps  I  may 
walk  with  you." — "If  Mary  will  come  too." — "I  have 
walked  so  far,"  said  Mary,  "but  I  will  ask  Jamie." — 
"Jamie!"  cried  Tom. — "I  admire  your  brother  so  much," 
murmured  Agnes.  And  at  that  moment  Jamie  came  in 
to  say  that  Margaret  was  asking  for  Tom. — "She  seems 
to  be  unhappy  about  you.  I  don't  know  what  you  have 
been  doing." — Tom  took  out  his  watch,  put  it  back  again, 
twiddled  the  chain,  pulled  down  his  waistcoat,  swung  his 
right  leg,  stroked  his  chin. — "I  was  blunt  with  her,"  he 
said  at  length. — "And  she's  been  blunt  with  me,  so  you'd 


204  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

better  go  and  be  kind  to  her,"  said  Jamie,  "or  the  Greigs 
will  think  us  the  most  quarrelsome  family  in  the  world." 
He  stole  a  shy  glance  at  Agnes  and  she  was  very  beau- 
tiful to  him. — "I  shall  not  be  long,"  said  Tom  and  with 
absurd  conscious  dignity  he  strode  from  the  room.  Mary 
pounced  on  her  opportunity  and  bade  Jamie  take  Agnes 
home.  She  bundled  them  out  of  the  house  and  Jamie 
walked  miserably  by  the  side  of  the  woman  he  loved 
best  in  the  world  two  paces  away  from  her.  He  had  a 
stick  in  his  hand  and  he  kept  changing  it  from  one  arm 
to  the  other,  carrying  it  across  the  small  of  his  back, 
with  his  arms  crooked  round  it,  or  across  his  shoulder, 
and  every  now  and  then  he  dropped  it.  At  last,  very 
timidly,  he  managed  to  say:  "My  sister,  Mary,  likes 
you  very  much." — "I  like  Mary,  too.  I  think  she  is  a 
dear." — "She  has  more  brains  than  the  rest  of  us  put 
together." — "My  grandfather  used  to  say:  'Character, 
passionate  character  is  what  counts.'  " — "He  must  have 
been  a  grand  man." — '"He  was." — "Hubert  talks  about 
him."  Within  himself  Jamie  said:  "I  don't  want  to 
talk  about  Hubert.  I  don't  want  to  talk  at  all.  O! 
Agnes,  Agnes,  it  is  an  agony  to  be  with  you." — But  Agnes 
was  happy  with  Hubert  for  a  subject.  He  was  so  entirely 
different  from  all  she  disliked  in  the  Greigs.  Jamie  said 
at  length:  "It  must  be  grand  to  live  among  all  this  love- 
liness."— "But  I  feel  sometimes,"  said  Agnes,  "that  I 
have  not  earned  it,  that  I  have  not  seen  ugliness  enough 
to  be  able  to  love  its  beauty." — "God  forbid,"  said  Jamie, 
"that  you  should  ever  see  an  ugly  thing  or  suffer  any 
hurt." — "Sometimes,"  answered  Agnes,  "I  long  to  suf- 
fer. It  is  almost  suffering  in  itself." — She  had  begun  to 
feel  suddenly  happy  with  this  handsome  and  romantic 
cousin  of  hers.  He  was  difficult  and  shy.  If  she  could 
only  make  him  open  out  to  her,  he  might  a  little  satisfy 


AGNES  OF  THE  LAKE  205 

her  longing.  She  felt  almost  pity  for  him,  though  she 
had  no  reason  to  think  he  needed  it.  Mary  had  described 
him  as  wonderful.  They  walked  on  through  a  long  si- 
lence which  he  broke  at  last  with  a  laugh:  "Cousin 
Agnes,"  he  said,  "I  take  you  from  one  comfortable 
house  to  another.  Would  it  surprise  you  if  I  told  you 
that  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  hate  comfortable 
houses?" — "No,"  she  said,  "not  altogether.  I  would  not 
be  surprised  at  anything  you  told  me." — "And  yet  you 
must  have  everything  of  the  best,  and  I  would  not  have 
you  have  less.  What  I  hate  about  you  I  cannot  hate  in 
you."  Agnes  was  pained.  She  did  not  know  why.  She 
said:  "But  you  yourself  will  one  day  be  rich  and  im- 
portant."— "I!  Never.  I  have  no  thought  in  my  head 
that  will  fit  into  such  houses  as  these,  and  indeed  I  know 
of  no  place  where  my  thoughts  will  fit."  He  was  quite 
cheerful  about  it,  taking  refuge  from  the  fierce  emotions 
with  which  he  was  beset  in  intellectual  probing,  in  a  new 
irony  which  he  had  lately  discovered  in  his  mind. — "I 
am  glad  you  have  told  me  so  much,"  said  she.  "I  hope 
one  day  you  will  tell  me  more." — "Why!  I  have  told 
you  nothing.  But  I'd  give  my  ears  to  see  you  in  love." 
Agnes'  thoughts  flew  guiltily  to  Tom.  He  added :  "Then 
I  could  tell  you  something." — "What?" — "My  whole 
abominable  soul."  He  felt  that  he  had  alarmed  her.  He 
was  astonished  to  find  himself  talking  so  to  her.  Never 
had  he  been  so  free  with  anyone.  He  was  so  much  in 
love  with  her  that  he  could  not  but  be  disinterested.  He 
could  not  assert  any  claim  to  her.  If  she  could  not  feel 
what  he  felt  for  her,  so  much  the  worse  for  him.  Words 
would  spoil  it,  drag  it  down,  make  what  he  had  to  give 
unworthy  of  the  giving.  Complications  on  complications 
delightful  to  his  irony.  He  was  sorry  for  her,  vastly 
sorry  for  her,  as  he  often  was  for  his  mother,  because 


206  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

she  was  a  woman  and  emotionally  confined.  But  in  his 
heart  there  was  an  agony  because  he  could  not  think  of 
her  apart  from  his  brother.  His  shyness  was  his  master. 
It  was  one  thing  to  sound  her  for  interest  in  himself ;  an- 
other to  follow  up  that  interest  when  discovered.  Tom 
and  she !  The  combination  was  so  fantastic  as  to  be  only 
too  probable.  Life  had  been  made  so  easy  and  smooth 
for  her:  she  would  always  look  for  the  easy  and  the 
obvious.  O  well!  There  would  be  no  subtility  about 
iTom,  while  she  set  himself  winding  through  the  most  in- 
tricate complications  in  the  effort  to  arrive  at  the  burn- 
ing emotion  she  roused  in  him.  He  would  never  do  it. 
She  would  never  help  him.  It  was  horrible  how  clearly 
he  saw  all  that.  She  would  have  her  comfortable  home, 
the  comfortable  adorations  with  which  she  was  sur- 
rounded and  the  tenderness,  the  passion  in  her  would 
never  be  roused.  He  was,  he  saw,  just  interesting  to 
her.  It  was  grimly  comical  to  be  walking  through  the 
rough  March  evening  with  her,  the  splendid  captive 
woman,  untouched,  unmoved,  child-like.  These  child- 
ish English!  Would  life  always  be  a  pretty  game  to 
them?  Would  they  never  suffer,  never  be  crushed  into 
humility;  would  they  always  shut  themselves  in  against 
life  and  never  go  out  upon  adventure,  never  seek  adven- 
tures within  themselves  ?  Agnes  seemed  to  Jamie  then  to 
be  the  true  figure  of  that  England  which  he  had  set  out 
to  conquer,  so  beautiful,  so  unapproachable,  so  isolated. 
And  her  isolation  was  not  that  of  thought  or  feeling  but 
that  of  a  sweet  unfailing  discretion.  What  she  was  not 
seemed  to  him  so  much  more  moving  than  what  she  was. 
With  a  man  she  would  be  more  submissive  than  re- 
sponsive. Jamie  could  appreciate  the  irony  of  this  love 
of  his  which  had  brought  him  none  of  love's  blindness. 
He  said: — "The  Lawries  won't  be  Englished  yet  awhile/' 


AGNES  OF  THE  LAKE  207 

And  she  answered :  "That  sounds  like  a  warning.  Is 
it?" — '"You  can  take  it  so,  if  you've  a  mind  to.  We've 
fared  hard,  and  everything  we  have  in  our  lives  must  be 
hard  or  we  will  have  none  of  it." — "Even  love?"  asked 
Agnes  timidly. — '"It  would  be  a  rare  woman  would  find 
and  keep  the  tenderness  in  a  Lawrie,"  said  he,  and  she 
felt  that  she  was  getting  out  of  her  depth  and  jerked  back 
to  her  placid  conventional  mode  of  thinking. — "You  are 
a  strange  man,  Cousin  Jamie,"  she  said. — "Not  so 
strange,"  said  he,  "if  you  should  come  to  know  me,  but 
that  is  none  too  easy,  with  me  or  any  man." 

Her  father's  house  was  nearer  the  lake,  and  the  path 
they  had  taken  led  by  its  shores,  where  the  water  lapped 
upon  the  pebbles  and  sucked  among  the  reeds.  There 
was  a  wild  sky,  with  torn  hurrying  clouds  and  behind  the 
fells  the  light  of  a  little  new-risen  moon.  They  stood 
and  gazed  over  the  water:  "You'd  never  know,"  he 
said,  "the  feeling  that  English  is  a  foreign  language  to* 
you  and  that  you  have  no  true  speech  of  your  own." — 
"No-o,"  said  Agnes,  mystified. — "Dod,"  he  said,  "what 
a  fool  I  am,  and  a  haverer.  I've  been  talking  to  you  as 
I  might  to  wee  Mary  and  what  I've  wished  to  say  I 
could  not  say." — '"I  wish  you  had  tried,"  said  Agnes 
feeling  dissatisfied  with  herself  and  anxious  to  do  better. 
— "Then,"  said  Jamie,  "I  wish  you  were  a  wild  thing.  I 
wish  you  could  be  a  kind  of  pixie  dwelling  in  the  lake  and 
that  I  could  be  a  wizard  to  call  you  forth  and  make  you 
human." — "Oh!  yes,"  said  Agnes,  half  comprehending 
and  trembling  upon  the  threshold  of  his  mood. — "Love 
is  like  that  to  me,"  he  added,  "wizardry." — "Wizardry," 
echoed  Agnes  and  her  eyes  began  to  see  the  familiar 
scene  as  they  had  never  seen  it  before,  as  a  thing  com- 
posed, designed,  vibrant,  calling  to  her  and  waking  a 
call  in  her  heart.  It  fluttered  her  heart,  and  she  was  in 


208  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  most  delicious  pain.  More  and  more  beautiful  to 
her  was  the  lake  under  the  moving  sky.  Jamie  as  yet 
had  no  share  in  it.  He  was  a  dark  figure  standing  by 
the  lake,  mysterious  and  wizard-like,  almost  intolerably 
inhuman.  The  pain  grew  in  poor  Agnes.  She  was  in- 
articulate and  helpless.  She  turned  to  him  for  pity,  for 
comfort,  and  terribly  she  was  almost  aware  of  him  as 
a  man.  She  wanted  to  cry  out  to  him  but  could  make  no 
sound.  She  was  afraid.  Behind  them  footsteps  sounded, 
and  another  coarser  fear  came  to  her  aid. — "Tom!"  she 
cried,  though  she  could  not  possibly  have  seen  him  in 
the  darkness  under  the  trees.  Jamie  gave  a  noise  that 
was  between  a  snarl  and  a  chuckle,  for  he  had  truly  been 
under  a  spell  and  it  was  hateful  to  him  to  be  brought 
out  of  it — and  by  Tom.  Tom  and  Agnes! — -"Where's 
your  wizardry  now?"  he  said  to  himself. — "Agnes!" 
called  Tom.  "You  will  catch  your  death  of  cold." — 
"Yes,  Tom,"  said  she,  shivering. — "You  must  be  mad, 
Jamie,  to  keep  her  out  on  a  night  like  this." — Jamie  made 
no  reply.  Tom  took  Agnes  by  the  arm  and  walked  her 
briskly  away.  "Tom's  the  boy,"  said  Jamie,  "to  play 
with  diamonds  as  though  they  were  marbles,  and  may 
the  Lord  have  mercy  on  me.  O  dear,  O  dear,  if  I  could 
but  have  the  rages  that  were  on  me  when  I  was  a  boy. 
When  life  becomes  a  joke  it  is  hardly  bearable." 

He  pursued  this  line  of  thought  with  Mary  in  her  room 
that  night  and  she  promised  to  send  him  some  books 
which  she  hoped  would  help  him,  also  translations  of 
some  of  Goethe's  poems.  "It  is  a  shame,"  she  said.  "I 
am  having  the  life  you  ought  to  have  had." — "I  think 
not,"  said  Jamie.  "I'd  be  using  my  fists  on  your  philoso- 
phers before  I'd  been  with  them  a  week.  Instead  of  that 
I  use  my  brains  on  dear,  good,  foolish  living  men  and 
that's  nigh  as  stupid." — "Oh !  Jamie,"  cried  Mary,  sitting 


AGNES  OF  THE  LAKE  209 

up  in  her  bed  and  looking  like  a  lively  mischievous  little 
girl,  "if  only  I  could  be  your  wife,  I'd  make  something 
of  you." — "What  would  you  make  of  me,  wee  Mary?" 
— "The  dearest,  oddest,  kindest  man  in  all  the  world," 
said  she. — "You're  a  funny  little  sparrow,"  he  said, 
stooping  over  her  and  kissing  her,  "but  the  English  don't 
want  dear,  kind  men  any  more.  Poor  Shelley's  dead  and 
they  have  forgotten  Toby  Shandy."— "O!  O!  O!"  cried 
Mary,  "I  wouldn't  waste  you  on  the  dirty  English.  I'd 
have  all  Edinburgh  running  after  you  like  the  children 
after  the  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin."— "Then,"  replied 
Jamie,  "you  don't  know  me,  for,  if  they  did,  then  I'd 
turn  and  spit  in  their  faces.  I  hate  a  crowd." 


CHAPTER    XX 

HUBERT   AS   DEVIL/S   ADVOCATE 


r¥AHE  return  to  Thrigsby  was  melancholy.  John's 
•*•  absence  made  a  difference  in  the  household,  for  he 
was  the  most  loquacious  member  of  the  family  and 
the  rest  had  to  loosen  their  tongues  whether  they  liked 
it  or  not.  The  result  was  a  nightly  sparring  between 
Jamie  and  Tom.  Their  hostilities  made  Margaret  acutely 
unhappy  and  she  decided  to  counter  them  with  a  change. 
She  had  been  very  busy  preparing  John's  house  in  a 
suburb  on  the  other  side  of  Thrigsby,  and  she  chose  a 
new  house  in  the  Harporley  Road,  which,  while  it  was 
twice  as  big  as  the  Murray  Street  house,  would  only  cost 
half  as  much  again  in  rent.  She  flattered  Jamie's  literary 
propensities  by  telling  him  that  he  could  have  one  of 
the  upstairs  rooms  for  himself,  and  Tom's  self-impor- 
tance by  according  him  the  private  use  of  the  dining- 
room  out  of  meal-times.  They  moved  and  the  brothers 
avoided  each  other.  Tibby  was  given  a  servant  to  help 
her,  and  the  existence  of  the  family  was  to  outward 
appearances  prosperous,  peaceful  and  monotonous.  At 
half-past  eight  the  front  door  opened  and  Tom  would 
appear  in  his  sober  suit  of  black  and  walk  off  down  the 
road:  at  a  quarter  to  nine  James  would  appear,  almost 
equally  sober  in  garb  with  a  coloured  tie  and  waist- 
coat and  walk  off  up  the  road.  On  Saturday  nights 
John  and  his  wife  would  come  to  supper. 

210 


HUBERT  AS  DEVIL'S  ADVOCATE  211 

There  was  a  social  advance  and  they  were  no  longer 
dependent  on  the  church  for  their  status.  Perhaps  be- 
cause of  this,  perhaps  because  they  had  other  interests, 
they  went  to  church  less  regularly. 

An  effort  was  made  and  Margaret  was  able  to  repu- 
diate her  pension  and  also  to  pay  back  all  the  money  she 
had  from  the  Scottish  fund  for  the  widows  of  ministers. 
Jamie  was  made  to  feel  that  Tom  was  responsible  for 
nine-tenths  of  this  triumph  of  domestic  economy  and, 
in  so  doing,  had  postponed  almost  indefinitely  any  inten- 
tion he  might  have  had  in  marrying.  Jamie  was  so  an- 
noyed that  he  said:  "Is  it  worth  it?" — "Worth  it?" 
cried  Tom.  "Worth  it,  to  have  our  mother  holding  her 
head  up  once  more?" — "She  could  hardly  hold  it  higher," 
retorted  Jamie,  "but  since  you  have  paid,  you  are  entitled 
to  your  satisfaction." — "I  should  like  to  know,"  said 
Tom,  "what  you  do  with  your  money." — "Exactly  what 
I  should  like  to  know  myself." — "You're  a  fine  banker." 
— "Perhaps  it  is  being  careful  with  other  folk's  money 
makes  me  careless  of  my  own." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Jamie  knew  perfectly  well  what 
became  of  his  money.  Miss  Selina,  Mrs.  Bulloch,  Henry 
Acomb  and  Mr.  Wilcox  all  had  their  share  in  it,  and,  had 
it  not  been  for  him,  Tibby  would  have  gone  without 
clothes  from  one  year's  end  to  the  other,  for  she  still 
had  only  enough  in  wages  to  keep  herself  in  print  frocks 
for  the  house. 

From  that  visit  to  the  Greigs  Jamie  returned  in  a  tor- 
ment of  which  he  could  make  nothing.  He  laughed  at 
himself  over  that  strange  idealisation  of  Agnes  which 
made  his  feeling  for  her  so  impersonal,  but  laughter 
could  not  change  it  and  he  did  not  wish  to  change  it. 
It  had  flicked  him  out  of  life,  given  him  a  power  in  him- 
self that  was  quite  useless  in  any^  other  walk  of  his  exist- 


212  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

ence.  There  was  simply  nothing  to  be  done  with  it.  There 
was  no  way  of  getting  rid  of  it. — "Oh!  well,"  he  said, 
"that  settles  it."  Yet  he  knew  not  what  it  was  that  was 
"settled."  He  did,  however,  become  aware  that  he  was 
altered,  that  he  now  regarded  everything  and  everybody 
in  a  cool,  detached,  humorous  fashion.  It  was  sometimes 
extremely  painful,  but  more  often  vastly  amusing.  He 
was  emotionally  so  clear  and  sure,  and  removed  from 
any  temptation  to  waste  emotion  on  things  and  people 
that  were  unworthy  of  it.  Tom  had  become  almost  a 
figure  of  farce.  He  would  get  on:  nothing  would  stop 
him  getting  on ;  but  he  would  get  nowhere.  Jamie's  own 
occupation  had  become  rather  ludicrous  to  him.  It  was 
practical,  ingenious,  interesting,  serviceable,  but  it  was 
fatuous  to  pretend  that  it  was  anything  more.  A  man 
should  work  to  live;  men  who  lived  in  order  to  work 
were  tiresome,  and  must  be,  he  thought,  in  the  long  run 
mischievous.  There  was  no  doubt  that  Thrigsby  worked, 
but  did  Thrigsby  live?  What  did  it  make  of  birth  and 
death,  of  the  life  of  the  mind,  of  the  desire  of  the  heart? 
Was  Thrigsby  justified  by  the  rapidly  growing  markets 
for  its  cotton  fabrics  in  all  parts  of  the  world? — As 
these  questions  were  not  very  amusing  but,  rather,  tor- 
menting, he  did  not  trouble  about  answering  them,  but, 
to  shelve  them,  turned  more  and  more  to  things  theatrical, 
collecting  his  articles  in  The  Critic  into  a  book  and  pleas- 
ing himself  with  the  idea  that  he  was  becoming  something 
of  an  authorty.  The  leading  actors  who  came  down 
from  London  wished  to  make  his  acquaintance  and  he 
took  this  as  tribute  to  his  powers  rather  than  to  his  posi- 
tion. He  had  become,  secretly,  Selina's  lover.  She  had 
played  with  him,  until,  opportunity  presenting  itself,  they 
had  embarked  light-heartedly  upon  that  enterprise  which 
promises  more  satisfaction  than,  as  a  rule,  it  gives.  Se- 


HUBERT  AS  DEVIL'S  ADVOCATE  213 

lina's  previous  experience  had  been  so  unhappy  that  she 
was  agreeably  surprised,  while  Jamie  with  his  new  in- 
tuition was  able  to  measure  the  relationship  exactly  and 
to  expect  from  it  no  more  than  was  forthcoming.  They 
were  amazingly  happy.  Selina  had  no  wish  but  it  was 
gratified;  Jamie  had  no  dark  mood  but  she  could  tease 
and  tickle  him  out  of  it.  What  nonsense  to  call  the 
theatre  an  outpost  of  damnation !  At  any  rate,  if  damna- 
tion be  one  half  so  pleasant,  then  let  the  prigs  have 
heaven.  They  deserve  it.  So  thought  and  so  said  Jamie 
when  he  was  well  embarked  upon  this  adventure.  It  had 
rid  him  of  one  of  the  most  deep-seated  notions  of  his 
upbringing  that  a  passion  to  be  worthy  of  the  name  must 
be  hopeless,  and  because  he  had  a  great  respect  for  Selina 
he  was  unable  to  think  of  her  as  not  respectable.  It  was 
his  delight  on  a  Sunday  night  to  drive  Selina  out  in  a 
dog-cart,  with  Mrs.  Bulloch  up  behind,  to  Hubert's  farm 
at  Chapel,  half-way  up  a  craggy  hill,  in  country  that, 
because  it  contained  no  Greigish  mansions,  seemed  al- 
most more  remote  than  Westmoreland.  This  country 
was  even  more  beautiful  because  it  had  had  no  poets  to 
sing  its  praises  and  turn  certain  corners  into  shows. 
Jamie  liked  to  think  that  every  man  in  it  was  his  own 
poet,  but  this  idea  would  not  let  him  off  thinking  that 
every  man  in  Thrigsby  also  was  his  own  poet  with  the 
song  of  his  life  swelling  up  beneath  its  freakish  appear- 
ances. And  so  happy  was  he  with  Selina  that  he  did  not 
reject  such  thoughts,  but  told  himself  that  the  sound  of  a 
man's  heart  was  as  absurdly  out  of  place  in  Thrigsby  as 
Selina  was  in  the  country,  as  absurdly  out  of  place  and 
as  delicious.  The  country  meant  nothing  to  her.  She 
would  not  walk  a  yard.  But  she  loved  the  luxury  of 
Hubert's  house  and  its  rich  taste  and  comfort. — "O!  O! 
O !"  she  cried,  "the  darling  little  bed !  I  never  knew  there 


214  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

were  such  houses.  O !  When  I'm  a  great  actress  I  shall 
have  ten  houses  like  this.  You  shall  live  in  one,  Quint, 
and  Ma  Bulloch  shall  live  in  another,  and  Henry  in 
another — and  when  my  Papa  is  dead  I  shall  have  the 
nicest  of  all  for  my  mother." — "If  the  girls  take  to  keep- 
ing separate  establishments  I  don't  know  what  the  world 
will  come  to,"  said  Mrs.  Bulloch.  "And  if  all  this  mag- 
nificence is  going  to  turn  your  head,  my  dear,  I'll  be  no 
chaperon." — The  old  woman  knew  perfectly  well  what 
was  going  on  and  was  very  pleased,  but  she  pretended 
to  know  nothing  and  had  either  of  them  betrayed  the 
matter  in  her  presence  she  would  have  refused  any  more 
to  be  a  party  to  it. — "Times,"  she  said,  "are  not  what 
they  were  in  my  young  day,  and  a  girl  cannot  be  too 
careful.  But  when  a  horse  has  got  a  blind  eye,  you  know 
which  side  to  go  of  it.  There's  all  the  difference  be- 
tween making  merry  and  making  free." — "What  shall 
we  do,"  asked  Jamie,  "when  Selina  goes  to  London  ?"- 
"When  Selina  goes  to  London,"  replied  Mrs.  Bulloch, 
"I  shall  go  too,  if  it  is  only  to  be  her  dresser.  They 
don't  write  parts  for  me  nowadays  since  the  theatre  got 
so  finicking.  Broad  I  may  be  in  my  speech  and  my  meth- 
ods but  old  women  are  old  women  and  they  can't  be 
treated  as  if  they  were  innocents.  My  own  children 
are  grown-up  and  ungrateful  and  Selina  is  like  a  daugh- 
ter to  me,  couldn't  be  more  so  if  I'd  washed  her  precious 
body  and  told  her  everything  she  ought  to  know." — '"O ! 
be  quiet,  Ma,"  said  Selina,  "Quint  wants  to  read  my  part 
to  me." — That  was  their  fiction,  that  Jamie  took  her 
down  into  the  country  to  go  over  her  new  parts  with 
her,  and  Mrs.  Bulloch  acquiesced  in  it  delightfully  with 
roguish  compliments  on  the  quietness  with  which  they 
learned  the  words. — '"Nothing  like  whispering,"  she 


HUBERT  AS  DEVIL'S  ADVOCATE  215 

would  say,  "till  you've  got  it  pat" — And  on  the  word 
pat  she  would  slap  the  back  of  her  fat  left  hand. 

They  had  a  grand  Christmas  party  to  which  Henry 
Acomb  was  bidden  and  Hubert  invited  himself.  Hubert 
was  delighted  with  the  affaire  Selina  and  its  effect  on  his 
young  relation,  who  had  grown  in  grace  through  it  and 
was  beginning  to  appreciate  the  pleasure  of  being  charm- 
ing for  its  own  sake.  Hubert  had  been  afraid  that  Jamie 
would  succumb  to  the  besetting  sin  of  the  Keiths  and  the 
Greigs — earnestness.  There  had  been  signs  of  his  tak- 
ing the  theatre  much  too  seriously,  and,  when  the  first 
enthusiasm  had  worn  off,  his  writing  had  become  rather 
heavy,  and  Bigge,  that  astute  journalist,  had  made  com- 
plaints which  however  had  not  been  brought  to  Jamie's 
ears.  Hubert  had  heard  of  the  adoration  of  Agnes  and 
had  been  alarmed,  for  he  knew  the  appalling  effect  of 
the  Greig  women  upon  their  lovers.  He  admired  and 
loved  Agnes  himself,  but  used  to  say  that  she  needed 
five  years  of  marriage  with  a  perfect  brute. — It  was 
one  of  his  crotchets  that  Englishwomen  need  licking  into 
shape  by  unhappiness.  It  was  thus  that  he  accounted 
whimsically  for  his  own  romantic  disaster.  "While  Eng- 
lishwomen are  what  they  are,"  he  used  to  say,  "English- 
men will  always  prefer  adultery  to  marriage."  As  he 
was  a  gentleman  of  wide  experience,  he  probably  knew 
what  he  was  talking  about. — When  therefore  Jamie 
came  and  asked  if  he  might  have  the  loan  of  his  farm 
and  with  many  blushes  confessed  the  use  to  which  he 
meant  to  put  it,  Hubert  was  delighted  but  disguised  his 
feelings.  And  later,  when  Jamie  could  no  longer  con- 
tain the  satisfaction  with  which  he  was  bursting  and 
spent  hours  in  talking  about  it,  Hubert  said :  "For  heav- 
en's sake  don't  talk  as  though  you  had  discovered  a  new 
religion." — "I  almost  feel  as  if  I  had,"  said  Jamie. — ' 


216  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"Nonsense.  She  would  be  bored  with  you  in  a  week  if 
you  were  taking  her  as  seriously  as  all  that.  She  likes 
your  gaiety  because  she  never  believed  you  could  be  gay 
and  she  has  no  desire  ever  to  be  anything  else." — "Oh! 
but  she  has  her  feelings  too." — "Of  course  she  has,  and 
she  feels  quite  rightly  that  they  are  there  to  keep  her  in 
zest  for  life." — "I  cannot  bear  to  have  her  sad  for  a  mo- 
ment."— "She  won't  be  if  you  let  her  feel  that  she  makes 
you  forget  everything  else." 

This  was  one  of  Jamie's  difficulties.  Selina  made  him 
realise  everything  else  the  more  acutely.  She  was  by 
this  time  completely  absorbed  by  the  theatre  and  all  the 
world  outside  was  but  her  audience.  She  loved  in  terms 
of  the  theatre,  that  is  to  say,  discreetly  and  artistically  as 
though  there  were  no  to-morrow  and  the  thing  must  be 
done  perfectly  for  to-day.  Her  acting  was  much  im- 
proved, for  she  went  through  all  her  parts  graciously, 
shedding  her  love  upon  her  audience,  and  archly,  as 
though  she  were  letting  them  into  some  delightful  secret. 
And  she  preserved  that  manner  when  she  stepped  off 
the  stage  into  her  life  with  her  lover.  He  knew  per- 
fectly that  there  was  no  secret  which  she  could  dis- 
close to  him :  he  had  the  whole  available  woman :  but 
it  was  pleasant  to  enter  into  the  comedy  with  her. — 
"We  are  going  to  be  wonderful,  aren't  we,  Quint?"  she 
would  say. — '"We?"  he  would  answer.  "I  have  my 
doubts  of  myself,  but  you'll  be  just  as  happy  fluttering 
over  another  field,  a  lovely  field  gay  with  cornflowers 
and  poppies." — "But  you  must  come  too." — "O!  I'll 
come  and  peep  over  the  hedge  at  you." — Selina  clapped 
her  hands.  "And  write  nice  things  about  me?" — "I 
shall  be  a  dull  old  gentleman  then,  thinking  of  making 
my  will  and  spiting  my  relations  after  my  death."-  -"I 
sometimes  wish  you  were  in  the  profession.  I'm  sure 


HUBERT  AS  DEVIL'S  ADVOCATE  217 

you  could  act,  Quint." — "I'm  too  old  now  and  my 
mother  would  die  of  grief.  It  would  be  worse  than  my 
death  to  her." — "As  it  was  to  my  poor  dear  poker  of  a 
father."  Only  the  thought  of  her  father  could  depress 
Selina  and  it  always  made  her  painfully  silent. 

For  the  Christmas  party  Jamie  drove  down  as  usual 
with  Selina  and  Mrs.  Bulloch,  while  Hubert  followed 
with  Henry  Acomb  and  Currie  Bigge,  in  a  waggonette 
containing  a  turkey,  two  geese,  a  plum  pudding,  two 
dozen  mince-pies,  a  ham,  a  round  of  beef,  two  jars  of 
preserved  ginger,  a  box  of  dried  plums,  four  boxes  of 
sweetmeats,  three  packets  of  Thrigsby  cakes,  a  pork 
pie  from  Cheshire's  in  Market  Street,  a  pot  of  pate  de 
foie  gras,  a  can  of  caviare,  a  barrel  of  beer,  a  dozen  of 
Chateau  Lafitte,  a  dozen  of  port,  half-a-dozen  bottles 
of  rum,  every  kind  of  "Christmas  cheer"  as  he  called 
them,  which  he  insisted  should  all  be  consumed  in  the 
two  days  set  apart  for  the  feast.  He  insisted  that  all 
his  guests  should  dress  up  for  dinner  even  if  it  were 
only  with  a  towel  for  a  turban.  Selina  wore  a  suit  of 
Hubert's;  Mrs.  Bulloch  appeared  as  a  cook:  Hubert 
donned  Turkish  trousers;  Currie  Bigge  was  disguised  as 
a  newspaper,  while  Jamie  wore  a  wreath  of  bay  leaves 
and  was  announced  as  Petronius.  Only  Henry  Acomb 
refused  to  disguise  himself. — "For  this  night  only," 
he  said,  "I  will  be  a  member  of  the  public." — "Ha!" 
cried  Mrs.  Bulloch,  "you  couldn't  be  that  if  you  tried." 
— "He  shall,"  said  Hubert,  "for  in  the  evening  we  will 
act  a  play  to  him." 

Dinner  was  very  merry.  Between  the  beef  and  the 
turkey  Bigge  began  to  sing  and  when  he  heard  that  the 
turkey  was  to  be  followed  by  a  goose  he  insisted  on 
making  a  speech  in  its  honour.  He  demonstrated  that 
it  had  died  for  its  country  and  had  attained  immortal 


218  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

life,  for  Mrs.  Bulloch  would  eat  of  it  and  Quintus  would 
make  a  poem  in  her  honour,  and  in  that  poem  the  goose 
would  go  down  to  posterity.  There  was  loud  applause 
and  Hubert  clattered  with  his  knife  on  his  plate  and 
called  on  Jamie  to  produce  his  poem  before  he  carved 
the  goose.  Jamie  stood  up  and  with  a  melancholy  eye 
fixed  Mrs.  Bulloch,  who  went  off  into  shrieks  of  laugh- 
ter. By  the  time  she  had  finished  he  had  his  poem 
ready : — 

"See  how  our  goose  becomes  a  swan, 
Its  folly  with  its  life  is  gone. 
It  lived  to  die  and  dies  to  live, 
With  all  the  grace  our  B.  can  give, 
On  all  she  is  and  has  and  knows, 
She  sheds  her  grace  where'er  she  goes. 
Becoming  B.  the  goose  finds  grace 
To  scatter  it  upon  this  place. 
To  B.  and  all  here's  good  digestion, 
The  boon  of  boons  beyond  all  question." 

"Not  so  bad,"  said  Hubert,  "but  you  couldn't  quite 
bring  in  the  swan." — Selina  was  annoyed  by  this  criti- 
cism and  said:  "Ma  Bulloch's  the  swan,  ain't  she, 
Quint?" — And  Ma  Bulloch  said  dreamily,  sleepily,  and 
happily : — '"I  had  a  white  bosom  when  I  was  young. "- 
Hubert  lay  back  in  his  chair  and  roared  with  laughter. 
He  was  delighted  with  his  party. — "Many's  the  com- 
pliment I've  had,"  said  Mrs.  Bulloch  in  her  ecstasy,  "but 
gentlemen  were  more  free  in  my  young  days." — "Would 
you  like  a  poem  to  your  bosom,  Mrs.  Bulloch?"  asked 
Hubert.  She  beamed  on  him  and  replied :  "It  wouldn't 
be  the  first,  Mr.  Greig." 

Everybody  had  to  make  a  speech  before  the  plum 


HUBERT  AS  DEVIL'S  ADVOCATE  219 

pudding  came  in.  Hubert  said:  "Ladies  and  gentle- 
men, we  are  living  in  a  Great  Age  and  on  an  occasion 
like  this  we  ought  not  to  forget  it.  We  are  citizens  of 
an  Empire  built  up  not  by  the  brutal  methods  of  war, 
but  by  the  arts  of  peace.  We  have  every  reason  to  be 
proud  of  ourselves." — ("Hear!  Hear!"  cried  Bigge.) 
— "Mr.  Bigge  says  'Hear!  Hear!'  I  must  inform  Mr. 
Bigge  that  I  was  speaking  ironically.  Proud  of  our- 
selves !  Outside  there  is  snow  upon  the  ground  and  it  is 
bitter  cold.  We  have  escaped  from  a  great  rich  city 
where  four-fifths  of  the  people  live  and  die  in  poverty, 
where  thousands  of  families  have  no  Christmas  dinner. 
Pride!  I  say  our  pride  is  a  sin  while  in  all  the  land 
there  is  one  child  who  is  allowed  to  go  to  bed  empty 
on  this  or  any  other  day.  Pride!  We  come  from  a 
great  rich  city  where  not  only  is  there  no  food  for  the 
bodies  of  thousands  of  citizens,  but  there  is  no  food 
for  the  mind.  The  noble  art  which  you  represent  is 
allowed  to  languish.  It  is  left  to  the  enterprise  of 
poor  discouraged  men.  Pride !  We  make  a  fancy  show 
and  a  great  noise  to  cover  up  the  emptiness  of  our  lives. 
Therefore  let  us  eat,  drink  and  be  merry,  for  to-morrow 
we  return  to  a  living  death." — He  sat  down  in  a  be- 
wildered silence.  Trembling  with  emotion  Henry 
Acomb  rose  to  his  feet. — "By  my  living  soul,  sir,"  he 
said,  "these  are  noble  words.  What  kind  of  city  is  that 
which  has  no  living  breath  of  art  in  it?  You  have 
touched  me,  sir,  in  my  deepest  sufferings.  My  days 
are  spent  in  filth  and  dirt,  sir,  but  I  have  my  dreams. 
I  shall  live  to  see  the  day  when  the  poor  player  will 
be  honoured  like  any  other  artist,  like  any  other  worker. 
I  myself,  sir,  shall  live  to  lay  my  art  on  the  steps  of 
the  throne,  and  let  that  damned  German,  the  Prince 
Consort,  tread  on  it  if  he  dare." — 'Jamie  began  to  feel 


220  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

uncomfortable.  Poor  Acomb  was  saying  more  than  he 
knew,  laying  bare  his  inmost  and  dearest  thoughts.  He 
stole  a  glance  at  Hubert,  who  was  enjoying  it.  He 
ought  not  to  enjoy  it:  not  fair  to  Acomb,  who  was  be- 
coming lyrical: — "O!  they  shall  see  the  beauty  that  I 
shall  put  upon  the  stage.  No  picture  ever  painted  shall 
approach  the  visions  I  shall  create.  Superb  men  and 
noble  women  shall  live  in  poems.  The  true  world  of 
Shakespeare  shall  be  seen  to  shame  the  mean  and  vulgar 
world  where  thoughts  and  loves  are  excrement.  Laugh- 
ter and  tears  shall  be  given  them  and  out  of  laughter 

and  tears  will  grow — shall  grow — shall  grow He 

lost  his  thread,  turned  very  white  and  sat  down.  Not 
another  word  did  he  utter;  nor  could  he  be  induced  to 
touch  another  morsel  of  food  or  another  drop  of  liquor. 
He  seemed  to  be  hardly  conscious  of  the  rest  of  the 
company. — "What  a  shame!"  whispered  Jamie  to  Hu- 
bert, who  replied:  "Do  him  good.  The  poor  wretch 
has  all  that  bottled  up  in  him.  It  is  amazing  to  me  that 
that  he  does  not  take  to  drink." — "Well,"  said  Mrs. 
Bulloch,  rising  from  the  table,  "what  I  say  every  Christ- 
mas is,  'Better  belly  burst  than  good  meat  lost'." — Cur- 
rie  Bigge  waved  his  glass  in  the  air  and  said :  "And  so 
say  all  of  us."  He  clapped  Acomb  on  the  back  and 
shouted,  "Cheer  up,  old  buffalo."  Acomb  sprang  to  his 
feet,  in  the  agony  of  being  shaken  out  of  his  musing, 
which  had  come  very  near  to  collapse. — "I'll  be  re- 
venged on  the  whole  pack  of  you." — "Malvolio!  Mal- 
volio!"  cried  Selina.  "Isn't  he  Malvolio!  Come,  we 
must  act  a  play:  you  and  me,  Quint,  and  Ma  Bulloch 
and  Currie.  That  leaves  Henry  and  Hubert  for  audi- 
ence." 

The  party  adjourned  to  the  parlour,   where  in  the 
wildest   spirits  they  acted   in  burlesque  an   impromptu 


HUBERT  AS  DEVIL'S  ADVOCATE  221 

drama  in  which  Selina  was  the  injured  heroine,  Jamie 
her  base  betrayer,  Mrs.  Bulloch  her  sorrowing  mother, 
and  Currie  Bigge  her  virtuous  brother  who  gave  up 
all  to  save  her  and  restore  her  good  name.  Acomb 
glared  and  glowered  at  them.  Burlesque  was  beyond 
him :  their  fun  seemed  to  him  to  be  a  profanation  of 
the  art  which  he  identified  with  himself.  Indeed  their 
performance  was  not  without  offence  and  Hubert  relished 
the  almost  immodest  exposure  of  the  real  relationship 
of  Jamie  and  Selina,  of  Currie's  knowledge  and  coarse 
approval  of  it,  and  of  Mrs.  Bulloch's  sentimental  delight 
in  it.  They  could  not  keep  within  their  fable  and  in 
the  scenes  between  Jamie  and  Selina  it  was  clear  to 
Hubert  that  she  was  the  seducer,  and  was  suffering  from 
the  timorous  dissatisfaction  which  attends  upon  success 
in  that  activity.  Jamie,  though  guilty  in  fact,  was  inno- 
cent in  spirit.  With  him  it  had  never  been  a  matter  of 
calculation.  Of  the  two  he  was  in  the  strong  position 
and  Selina  plainly  resented  this.  Only  Mrs.  Bulloch 
thoroughly  enjoyed  the  play.  The  rest  were  glad  when 
it  came  to  an  end.  There  were  moments  of  tension 
to  obtain  relief  from  which  Hubert  invited  Acomb  to 
recite,  and  the  actor,  delighted  to  be  at  last  the  dominant 
figure,  held  them  spellbound  with  Eugene  Aram.  He 
was  tremendous.  Horror  and  cold  fascination  as  he 
brooded  over  the  dark  secret  worked  in  him,  fastened 
upon  his  brain,  chilled  it,  brought  him  almost  to  mad- 
ness from  which,  on  the  appearance  of  the  runners,  he 
sank  into  a  relieved  apathy. — "He  is  amazing,"  said 
Jamie,  "that's  true  drama:  real  creation;  human  experi- 
ence contained  and  directed  upon  the  imagination  so 
that  it  can  be  apprehended  and  understood.  He  must 
have  hated  our  trifling  with  it." — But  here  again  the 
effect  of  the  play-acting  had  not  disappeared :  Acomb 


222  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

also  was  forced  into  self -revelation.  As  he  ended,  he 
shook  off  Aram,  sloughed  him,  and  turned  to  Selina. 
He  cared  for  no  one  else  in  the  room.  He  was  tor- 
tured by  his  love  for  her  and  accepted  the  imprisonment 
of  her  indifference  even  as  Aram  had  yielded  to  the 
runners. — "Very  nice,  Henry.  You  must  do  that  at 
Ma's  benefit,"  said  Selina.— "The  little  fool,"  thought 
Hubert,  "the  little  fool,  to  play  about  with  Jamie. 
There's  a  fire  there  would  carry  her  higher  than  she 
can  dream."  He  turned  to  watch  Jamie  who  was  argu- 
ing with  Mrs.  Bulloch.  Had  he  seen  that  little  drama 
of  Acomb's  desperate  surrender?  If  he  had  seen  he 
was  covering  up  his  feelings  very  well.  And  yet  Hu- 
bert was  sure  that  he  was  acting.  How  strange  these 
play-house  people  were.  There  was  never  any  knowing 
when  they  were  themselves :  or  were  they  most  them- 
selves when  they  were  not  themselves?  Hubert  went 
off  into  a  reverie  amusing  himself  with  the  problem 
which  became  rather  like  one  of  those  trick  conundrums 
in  which  words  are  so  placed  as  to  be  more  baffling 
the  more  they  are  considered.  Acomb  had  now  dropped 
into  the  sofa  by  Selina's  side,  and  she  was  giving  her- 
self the  pleasure  of  exciting  him.  He  became  more 
and  more  gloomy  and  depressed  and  sat  with  folded 
arms  and  pursed  lips  glaring  at  Jamie  with  the  blackest 
hatred.  Jamie  turned,  and  feeling  the  intense  emotion 
in  Acomb  was  baffled  by  it  and  smiled  to  disguise  his 
discomfort.  Acomb  rose  to  his  feet,  and  it  was  as 
though  another  play  had  begun.  He  moved  towards 
Jamie,  who  rose  to  his  feet  and  drew  himself  up  to  his 
full  height.  He  was  nearly  a  head  taller  than  his 
sudden  adversary  and  in  natural  dignity  had  the  advan- 
tage, but  the  other  had  it  in  passion.  It  looked  as 
though  there  were  going  to  be  a  contest. — "This  must 


HUBERT  AS  DEVIL'S  ADVOCATE  223 

stop,"  thought  Hubert,  "this  must  stop."  But  he  could 
not  say  a  word.  The  two  men  faced  each  other :  Jamie 
smiling,  Acomb  very  white.  Mrs.  Bulloch  gave  a  little 
giggle  and  said : — "I  do  hope  we  shall  all  get  to  our 
proper  beds  to-night.  There's  many  a  mix-up  caused 
by  a  good  dinner." — Her  voice  acted  strangely  on  Acomb. 
He  shook  and  trembled  and  said  in  a  queer  strangled 
voice:  "I  have  the  greatest  respect  for  Quintus  Flu- 
men.  Upon  James  Lawrie  I  wipe  my  boots." — "Good 
gracious!"  cried  Mrs.  Bulloch,  suddenly  alive  to  the 
situation,  "they're  going  to  fight,"  and  she  leaned  for- 
ward, caught  Jamie  by  the  coat-tails  and  pulled  him 
back  into  his  chair.  Currie  Bigge  gave  a  roar  of  laugh- 
ter, and  then  at  once  all  were  silent,  for  the  door  had 
opened  and  Tom  stood  there,  very  grim  and  disapprov- 
ing. In  his  deep  sardonic  voice  he  said :  "James !" — 
Jamie  turned,  startled. — "Tom!"  he  cried.  "What  the 
devil  are  you  doing  here?" — "Your  place  is  at  home," 
said  Tom.  He  ignored  the  rest  of  the  company  and 
stood  deliberately  with  his  back  to  Hubert. — "Why?" 
asked  Jamie. — "Uncle  Andrew  is  dying,  and  my  mother 
needs  you." — "Andrew!"  said  Hubert,  his  voice  express- 
ing joy  and  relief.  Tom  turned  on  him  and  said  :  "You 
have  done  harm  enough  in  my  family." — "He  was  dead 
thirty  years  ago,"  said  Hubert.  Turning  to  Jamie,  he 
added:  "I  think  you  must  go,  Jamie.  When  you  get 
home  will  you  read  Shelley's  preface  to  Alastor;  or,  stay, 
I  will  give  you  my  copy  to  read  on  your  way  home." — 
To  Jamie  Selina,  Mrs.  Bulloch  and  Acomb  had  disap- 
peared. He  followed  Tom  out.  Hubert  hurried  after 
them  and  offered  them  the  use  of  the  waggonette. — "I 
walked  here,  through  the  snow,"  replied  Tom.  "We'll 
walk  back." 


CHAPTER  XXI 
ANDREW'S  WILL 


'T^HROUGH  the  snow  trudged  the  two  tall  brothers, 
•*•  Jamie  now  nearly  as  grim  as  Tom.  After  a  long 
silence  Jamie  said:  "How  did  you  know  where  to  find 
me?" — "Thrigsby,"  answered  Tom,  "is  full  of  tongues, 
as  I  should  have  thought  you  would  have  realised  by 
now." — "So  they  talk  about  me?" — "As  about  everyone, 
but  other  men  are  proud  and  do  not  give  them  facts  to 
go  upon." — "Has  the  talk  reached  mother?"  asked 
Jamie.— "It  has."— "And  Andrew?"— "I  never  heard 
him  speak  of  it." — "How  long  has  he  been  ill?" — "Last 
night.  It  is  the  second  stroke.  The  first  was  hushed  up. 
It  was  the  night  of  the  riot." — "I  see." — "He  has  never 
been  the  same  man  since  his  wife  left  him." — "I've  heard 
that  before,"  said  Jamie.  "He  was  never  frankly  the 
man  he  was  until  she  did." — "He  was  a  fine  man." — "He 
was  a  damned  hypocrite." — "Speak  well  of  the  dying," 
said  Tom. — "It  would  be  better  if  we  did  not  speak  at 
all." — "I  should  have  thought  you  would  be  moved  to 
regret  by  the  shadow  of  death  upon  your  debaucheries." 
— "Have  you  no  vices  yourself,  Tom?  But  it  depends  on 
what  you  call  vice." — "This  is  no  time  for  sophistries. 
Your  mother's  brother  is  dying.  He  is  yielding  up  his 
immortal  soul  to  God." 

Their  conversation  was  kept  up  with  difficulty  for  the 

224 


ANDREW'S  WILL  225 

snow  fell  ever  more  heavily.  It  was  inches  deep  upon  the 
ground  and  here  and  there  had  drifted  before  the  wild 
wind.  Soon  they  trudged  along  in  silence  again  for  they 
had  taken  the  short  cut  across  a  high  hill,  the  top  of 
which  was  moorland.  Jamie  felt  strangely  that  his  situa- 
tion was  not  altered:  that  he  was  faced  with  hostility, 
the  same  hostility,  represented  now  not  by  Acomb  but 
by  his  brother.  He  discovered  then  that  among  men  he 
nearly  always  felt  isolated.  Their  interests  were  not 
his:  their  ways  of  living  were  strange,  dark  and  unin- 
telligible to  him.  With  women  he  was  happier,  but  that 
might  be  only  because  theirs  was  the  physical  interest. 
He  was  filled  with  a  rage  of  disgust  at  himself,  and  ad- 
mitted that  he  had  betrayed  his  family,  exposed  them  to 
suspicion,  perhaps  to  ridicule.  For  a  moment,  in  the 
snowstorm,  responding  spiritually  to  the  physical  im- 
potence forced  upon  him  by  the  cruel  wind,  he  thought 
that  Tom  was  a  better  man  than  himself.  Out  of  the 
corner  of  his  eye  he  watched  him  stubbornly,  obstinately, 
almost  mechanically  plodding  on  against  the  wind.  "No 
sense  of  impotence  there,"  he  thought,  and  then  in  the 
flash  of  insight  which  he  had  learned  from  Hubert  he 
capped  the  thought :  "Dod,  no,  of  course  not.  Impotence 
is  a  habit  with  him  and  he  never  suspects  it  in  himself." 
His  comic  sense  returned  then  and  he  began  to  find  the 
wind  exhilarating,  to  feel  his  chest  expanding  to  it,  his 
limbs  glowing  in  vigour,  and  from  the  bottom  of  his 
heart  he  thanked  God  that  he  was  not  as  other  men  are. 
His  was  a  gleeful  and  innocent  Pharisaism  and  he  had 
humour  enough  to  imagine  that  Tom  was  thinking,  as 
indeed  he  was:  "Thank  God  I  am  not  as  my  brother, 
James." 

It  had  been  extremely  painful  to  Tom  to  come  down  to 
Hubert's  farm  and  discover  his  brother  in  all  his  shame. 


226  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

It  robbed  him  of  the  power  to  regard  it  as  a  hidden 
wickedness,  rather  dreadfully  delicious  to  contemplate. 
His  distress  worked  in  him  as  he  walked,  and  his  moral 
indignation  grew  into  a  personal  animosity  against  James 
for  having  deprived  him  of  one  of  his  pleasures.  How- 
ever, he  avoided  the  danger  of  that  condition  by  letting 
it  congeal  into  contempt,  and,  even  as  Jamie  was  rilled 
with  a  lusty  defiance  of  the  storm,  Tom  despised  him. — 
"I'm  the  head  of  this  family,"  he  thought.  "From  now 
on  I'm  the  head.  Poor  Jamie!  How  weak  he  is." 

In  the  train  Jamie  took  out  Hubert's  Shelley  and  turn- 
ing to  Alastor,  read: — "Among  those  who  attempt  to 
exist  without  human  sympathy,  the  pure  and  tender- 
hearted perish  through  the  intensity  and  passion  of  their 
search  after  its  communities,  when  the  vacancy  of  their 
spirit  suddenly  makes  itself  felt.  All  else,  selfish,  blind 
and  torpid,  are  those  un  foreseeing  multitudes,  who  con- 
stitute, together  with  their  own,  the  lasting  misery  and 
loneliness  of  the  world.  Those  who  love  not  their  fellow- 
beings  live  unfruitful  lives  and  prepare  for  their  old  age 
a  miserable  grave."  Looking  up  from  his  book  across 
at  Tom  he  said  to  himself :  "Morally  dead."  Did  the 
cap  fit  Tom  ?  O !  It  fitted  Andrew !  It  fitted  Andrew. 
It  was  fine  to  have  Andrew  fitted  after  all  these  years. 
It  settled  him.  He  was  no  more  to  be  hated,  no  more  to 
be  feared;  no  more  would  his  name  rouse  resentment. 
He  was  not  above  humanity  as  he  had  pretended,  but 
rather  below  it.  Morally  dead !  He  coulcl  only  share  in 
humanity  its  dear,  tragic,  lovable  absurdity:  and  that 
Jamie  had  begun  passionately  to  appreciate,  as  much,  to 
his  credit  be  it  said,  in  himself  as  in  others.  There  were 
exceptions  it  is  true.  Tom  was  one  of  them.  He  was  so 
rigid:  his  world  did,  to  all  appearances,  so  perfectly  fit 
in  with  his  belief  in  a  God  who  was  creator,  law-giver 


ANDREW'S  WILL  227 

and  judge,  and  had  made  the  world  awry  for  the  pleasure 
of  showing  later  on  how  easily  it  could  be  straightened 
out.  And  Tom  was  respectable :  there  was  something 
dignified  and  distinguished  about  him ;  he  might  be  only 
a  cotton  goods  merchant  but  he  looked  and  behaved  like 
a  diplomatist,  one  whose  appearance  might  almost  make 
a  nation  feel  most  favoured.  Why  must  he  take  every- 
thing so  seriously?  Perhaps  ambassadors  always  do. 
And  Tom  certainly  was  an  ambassador.  He  had  been 
sent  to  reclaim  his  brother  back  from  the  world  of  lost 
souls,  to  that  of  souls  intent  on  being  saved.  Jamie 
laughed.  "O  Tom!"  he  said,  "you  look  as  black  as  the 
sky  outside.  Why  should  my  folly,  if  you  must  call  it 
so,  worrit  you?  I'll  pay  for  it,  never  fear." — "No  doubt 
of  that,"  replied  Tom,  "but  it  is  a  law  of  nature  that  the 
innocent  suffer  with  the  guilty." — "Tut!  It  is  time 
Nature  was  a  little  improved  on." — "I  wish,"  said  Tom, 
almost  affectionately,  for  the  walk  through  the  snow  had 
done  him  good  and  jogged  his  sluggish  liver,  "I  wish  you 
would  give  up  Hubert  as  a  mark  of  respect  for  Uncle 
Andrew.  It  would  make  mother  happy." — "But,  my 
dear  Tom,  I  had  no  respect  for  him." — "He  was  a  great 
power  in  Thrigsby  in  his  day." — "I  have  no  respect  for 
Thrigsby." — "What  I  mean,"  said  Tom  with  his  heavy 
common-sense,  "is  that  when  Uncle  Andrew  is  dead  the 
old  talk  is  sure  to  be  revived  and  it  will  look  bad  for  you, 
who  are  so  well  known,  to  be  seen  with  Hubert." — "O ! 
Tom!  Tom!  Be  fair!  Be  generous  if  you  can.  When 
Andrew  is  dead  and  his  wife  is  dead,  the  story  belongs 
to  Hubert  and  is  his  alone." — "Exactly,"  answered  Tom, 
"and  he  alone  must  suffer  for  it.  If  you  have  anything 
to  do  with  him,  you  will  suffer  too — and  mother  will 
suffer."  Jamie  was  by  now  roused  to  argument :  "Why 
not?"  he  said.  "Why  not?  If  this  world  is  a  vale  of 


228  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

suffering,  why  not?  Why  avoid  the  suffering  you  can 
see  for  another  that  you  wot  not  of?" — "A  manager  of  a 
bank,"  said  Tom  solemnly,  "cannot  be  too  careful  in  the 
choice  of  his  friends." — "As  it  happens,"  retorted  Jamie, 
"Hubert  is  one  of  our  best  clients  and  he  has  a  better  un- 
derstanding of  money  as  money  than  anyone  on  our 
staff."  Tom  was  apparently  a  little  mollified.  "It  beats 
me,"  he  said,  "it  beats  me  how  any  man  can  be  so  success- 
ful in  business,  as  Hubert  undoubtedly  is — and  I  don't 
mind  telling  you  that,  out  of  pure  spite,  he  thwarted 
Andrew  again  and  again — it  beats  me  to  know  how  a  man 
can  be  so  able  and  yet  so  indifferent  to  reputation.  Think 
what  Hubert  might  have  been  if  he  had  not  shown  himself 
a  blackguard,  and  allowed  that  woman  to  ruin  his  career. 
He  can  never  stand  for  Parliament  or  the  Town  Council, 
and  you  know  he  had  to  resign  from  the  Portico."-  -"He 
founded  the  Arts  which  is  ten  times  as  amusing." — "A 
drinking-shop,"  said  Tom.  "A  drinking-shop.  He  is 
notorious  when  he  might  have  been  famous.  He  is  a 

harlequin  when  he  might  have  been " — "Pantaloon!" 

The  stream  of  Tom's  eloquence  was  stopped  for  he  was 
rather  afraid  of  the  gleam  in  his  brother's  eye,  knowing 
that  it  portended  what  he  had  once  called  "philosophic 
wit." — "At  all  events,"  said  Tom,  "I  hear  what  I  hear 
and  cannot  help  hearing,  and  after  to-day's  lamentable 
experience  I  hope  you  will  forgive  me  if  I  say  what  I 
think  to  be  for  your  good." — "Morally  dead!"  thought 
Jamie,  and  he  saw  at  once  that  his  brother  could  as  well 
apply  the  words  to  him,  with  another  meaning.  There 
was  a  good  deal  to  be  said  from  Tom's  point  of  view, 
but  Jamie  would  be  hanged  if  he  would  have  him  saying 
it. — "It  seems  to  me,"  said  Tom,  "almost  indecent  to  be 
going  from  that  man's  house  to  the  house  in  which 
Andrew  is  lying  at  the  point  of  death." — "Damn  it, 


ANDREW'S  WILL  229 

man,"  cried  Jamie,  "when  a  man's  dying  isn't  it  indecent 
of  the  rest  of  us  to  be  alive?" — "It  is  certainly  chasten- 
ing," answered  Tom. — "I  forgot  to  say  good-bye  to  my 
friends,"  continued  Jamie,  not  feeling  at  all  chastened 
and  only  sorry  to  have  been  guilty  of  such  discourtesy. 

There  was  a  long  silence  which  Tom  broke  by  saying : 
"He  will  receive  his  due  at  the  great  settlement." — 
"Who?"— "Andrew."— "I  should  say  he  had  had  it  here 
below." — "He  would  have  had  but  for  Hubert.  He  never 
recovered  from  that  blow." — "Neither  has  Hubert." — 
"Hubert?  What  had  he  to  recover  from?"— "The 
malicious  tongues  of  Thrigsby  and  living  with  a  woman 
who  had  lived  with  Andrew." — "Abominable !  He's  cor- 
rupted you,  James.  You  can't  touch  pitch  without  being 
defiled." — "You  can't  touch  a  human  being  without  be- 
coming more  human." — "I  will  not  argue  with  you." — 
"No.  You  had  better  not." 

Another  silence.  Tom  finally  exploded: — "You  seem 
to  think  you  have  only  yourself  to  consider.  Have  my 
mother's  wishes,  have  her  feelings  no  weight  with  you? 
Are  you  as  cold  as  the  snow  out  there?  I  have  to  fetch 
you  from  the  society  of  your  pimps  and  harlots " 

Jamie  slid  his  Shelley  into  his  pocket  and  pursed  his 
lips  and  scanned  Tom's  face,  behind  which  was  a  storm 
of  indignant  fury. — "Have  a  care,  Tom,"  he  said.  "I 
value  my  friends  and  I  do  not  choose  them  for  the 
advantage  they  may  bring  me.  If  I  were  as  drunken 
as  poor  Burns  and  you  took  it  upon  yourself  to  upbraid 
me  I  would  strike  the  words  from  your  lips.  We're 
brothers,  can  we  not  make  room  for  each  other  ?  I  made 
room  for  you  in  Andrew's  business,  at  home,  and  in  the 
town  I  have  never  stood  in  your  way."  He  would  have 
said  more  but  shyness  overcame  him.  He  was  not  used 
to  exposing  his  thoughts  and  feelings  to  his  brother.— 


23o  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"What  I  mean  to  say  is,"  said  Tom,  equally  shy,  "that 
mud  thrown  at  you  clings  to  us."  Jamie  replied  with 
a  chuckle:  "But  you'd  never  let  me  share  your  halo. 
And  I'll  be  as  loyal  to  my  Hubert  as  you  are  to  your 
Andrew." — "If  you  can,"  said  Tom,  "remember  that 
Andrew  is  dying." 

They  had  reached  Thrigsby.  Here  the  snow  was  al- 
ready dirty  slush,  bitterly  cold  to  the  feet.  It  had  been 
very  cold  in  the  train ;  a  most  dismal  ending  to  a  festive 
Christmas;  and  here  was  old  Thrigsby  at  its  foulest. 
The  streets  were  empty  except  for  an  occasional  drunken 
man.  Jamie  appreciated  the  contrast  and,  glaring  at  his 
brother,  wondered  if  he  never  found  anything  amusing. 
Tom  had  cultivated  an  erect  carriage,  stiff  as  Peter  Leslie 
engrossed  in  churchwardenship.  His  body  hardly  moved 
as  his  legs  swung  in  their  long  stride,  as  regular  as  a 
pendulum.  Tick-tock!  Tick-tock!  The  Cartesian  man 
in  Thrigsby! — Jamie  felt  that  his  own  walk  was  a  mere 
shamble  and  to  assert  himself  he  felt  that  he  must  run, 
rather  as  Mrs.  Leslie  used  to  break  into  a  trot  when  she 
was  out  walking  with  her  husband. — "It's  the  same  old 
Tommy,"  thought  Jamie,  "and  there'll  be  no  stopping 
him.  Those  thin  legs  of  his  would  walk  through  any- 
thing that  got  in  his  way.  He  must  have  shin-bones  like 
razors." — "I  say,  Tom,"  said  he,  "when  you're  mayor 
I  hope  you'll  have  the  streets  cleaned." — "I  shall  see  to 
it  that  the  whole  city  is  clean  mentally,  morally  and 
physically." — "God  save  us,"  thought  Jamie,  "the  man's 
a  scavenger." 

When  they  reached  home  they  found  Tibby  awaiting 
them.     Margaret  had  gone  off  with  John. — "How  is 
she?"  asked  Jamie. — "In  a  terrible  way.     She  must  go, 
and  would  not  stay,  though  I  told  her  he  was  dead."- 
"Dead?"  cried  Tom. — "As  the  sun  went  down,"  said 


ANDREW'S  WILL  231 

Tibby.— "Did  they  send?"  asked  Tom.— "No.  They 
didna  send." — "She  knew  it,"  said  Jamie,  his  eyes  meet- 
ing Tibby's,  and  he  felt  also  that  she  knew  where  he  had 
been.  What  did  she  think  of  him?  He  knew  that  too. 
She  was  with  him,  on  his  side. 

Tom  went  upstairs  to  get  his  Bible.  Jamie  told  Tibby 
about  the  party. — "I  often  look  through  the  lighted  win- 
dows," said  Tibby.  "They  are  like  a  play  to  me." — 
"Did  she  want  us  to  go  after  her?"  asked  he. — Tibby 
gave  her  strange  grim  smile:  "Aye,"  she  said,  "she'll 
want  you  to  have  a  sight  of  his  corpse." — "I've  never  seen 
one,"  said  Jamie  in  a  whisper. — "I  saw  my  father," 
answered  Tibby,  "and  he  was  noble." — "If  I'd  loved  the 
man,  I  would  like  it  better,"  said  Jamie. 

No  such  scruple  tormented  Tom.  He  had  his  Bible 
and  umbrella  and  marched  away,  Jamie  following  in  his 
wake,  rather  like  a  dog  that  is  not  certain  of  being 
wanted.  As  he  caught  him  up  Tom  said :  "But  for  you 
I  should  not  have  been  too  late."  Tick-tock  went  his 
legs  and  Jamie  shambled  along  by  his  side,  reduced  to 
silence.  They  made  the  journey  by  the  three  omnibuses 
and  came  to  Clibran  Hall.  There  the  butler  admitted 
them  and  gave  them  cake  and  Madeira  wine  in  the  din- 
ing-room exactly  as  he  used  to  do  when  they  called; 
only  he  broke  his  habitual  silence  by  saying:  "He  was 
a  good  master." — "Yes,  yes,"  said  Tom,  sitting  with  his 
Bible  open  on  his  knee,  a  glass  of  wine  in  his  hand  and 
his  mouth  full  of  cake. 

Margaret  came  in.  Jamie  went  to  her  and  kissed  her 
cheek. — "He  found  you  then?"  she  said.  "Christmas 
day.  I  thought  you  would  have  been  at  home." — Jamie 
thought  of  the  actors'  Christmas,  and  how  different  and 
unfestal  the  feast  had  been  in  his  own  boyhood. — "I 
had  promised  my  friends,"  he  said. — With  his  mouth  full 


232  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Tom  said  :  "I  found  him  with  Hubert." — Margaret  drew 
away,  and  cast  her  eyes  up  to  the  ceiling.  Old  Andrew 
lay  in  the  room  above.  Jamie  could  find  nothing  to 
say. — "Did  Tibby  tell  you?  She  knew.  I  did  not  be- 
lieve her — but  she  knew.  He  was  my  eldest  brother. 
Will  you  go  up,  one  at  a  time  ?"  Jamie  stole  away. 

Outside  a  door  he  came  on  an  old  dog,  a  fat,  stupid, 
cantankerous  beast  that  Andrew  had  alternately  overfed 
and  kicked.  It  gazed  up  at  Jamie  forlornly  and  tried 
to  follow  him  as  he  went  in.  He  saw  John,  to  his  as- 
tonishment, kneeling  by  the  bedside.  John  rose.  He  was 
genuinely  moved.  He  muttered : — "Something  about  the 
old  fellow.  Intolerable  loneliness,  you  know.  May  God 
be  good  to  his  spirit." — John  stole  out  of  the  room,  and 
Jamie  went  over  to  the  bed.  He  was  shocked  by  the 
dignity  and  power  that  had  come  into  the  old  man's 
face.  It  seemed  incredible  to  him  and  false;  a  trick, 
one  last  trick.  He  remembered  Shelley's  words. — "No 
love  of  his  kind."  Aloud,  yet  in  a  whisper,  Jamie  said : 
"I  hated  you,  my  friend,  and  now  there  is  neither  love 
nor  hate,  but  only  a  bitter  memory." — John  had  been 
taken  in:  dear,  honest  John,  taken  in  by  the  trick  of 
death,  the  dignity  of  the  body  reasserted  when  its  abuse 
was  at  an  end.  Jamie  was  tortured  with  thoughts  which 
he  could  not  articulate.  He  still  believed  in  a  next  world, 
and  thought  of  Andrew  already  there  beginning  to  scheme 
and  plot  and  plan  for  the  exploitation  of  his  fellow- 
beings  on  that  plane.  Andrew's  personality  was  so 
vigorously  and  dominantly  expressed  in  that  room, 
though  death  had  transformed  and  disguised  his  body. 
More  and  more  torturing  were  his  thoughts,  until  at  last 
tears  came  and  Jamie  stumbled  away,  out  of  the  room, 
and  stood  fondling  the  dog. — "Poor  dog!"  he  said. 


ANDREW'S  WILL  233 

"Good  dog!  Fond  of  him,  were  you?  I  wish  I  could 
have  been." 

Tom  came  up,  went  in  and  was  out  again  in  a  moment. 
"The  greatness  of  the  man  is  there,"  he  said,  "what  he 
really  was,  not  what  his  unhappy  life  had  made  him." 
Jamie  choked  with  emotion  and  disgust.  Was  Tom 
fool  or  hypocrite?  Why  had  he  not  John's  honesty  and 
decent  discretion? 

They  went  down  together  to  the  cake  and  wine,  when 
it  was  agreed  that  John  should  see  to  the  funeral  ar- 
rangements while  Tom  saw  the  lawyers  and  sent  out  the 
invitations.  Jamie,  it  appeared,  was  to  be  punished  by 
having  nothing  to  do.  Margaret  would  stay  with  John, 
who  lived  quite  near,  until  the  funeral:  Tom  announced 
his  intention  of  remaining  in  the  house;  Jamie  was  to 
go  home  and  inform  Tibby  of  their  plans.  He  asked, 
Was  Tibby  to  come  to  the  funeral? — No,  she  was  not. 
What  was  she  to  Andrew  or  Andrew  to  her?  Already 
it  was  plain  to  see  that  Tom  was  feeling  the  burden  of 
his  responsibilities. — "It  will  be,"  he  said,  "on  Monday." 
-"It's  over  long  for  a  corpse  to  lie,"  muttered  Jamie. — 
"Tssh!  Tssh!"  clicked  Tom.  "His  will  be  no  ordinary 
funeral  and  your  journalist  friends  will  be  busy  even 
now  with  the  obituaries." — The  sneer  touched  Jamie, 
who  said  that  his  journalist  friends  were  but  little  fleas 
upon  big  fleas. 

He  was  glad  to  escape  from  Clibran  Hall  and  from 
Tom  so  joyfully  placing  himself  at  the  service  of  the 
dead;  to  walk  through  the  Thrigsby  that  Andrew  had 
helped  to  make;  to  feel  that  the  live  ass,  himself,  was 
better  than  the  dead  lion,  and  that  the  ass's  life  was 
more  secure  and  easier  for  the  lion's  demise.  He  up- 
braided himself  for  the  selfishness  of  these  thoughts  and 
tried  to  remember  only  the  good  in  his  successful  and 


234  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

distinguished  kinsman.  Having  the  privilege  of  Hubert's 
view,  he  found  that  difficult  and  decided  that  it  was 
better  left  to  the  journalists.  He  found  himself  sud- 
denly thinking  quite  simply  of  Andrew  as  a  man,  born 
in  the  usual  way,  living  in  the  usual  structure  of  flesh, 
bone  and  blood;  endowed  and  troubled  with  the  usual 
organs,  and  subject  to  the  usual  emotions.  And  life 
seemed  large  and  easy  and  very  nearly  comprehensible. 
In  justice  he  could  not  but  think  of  himself  in  the  same 
way:  this  was  more  difficult,  but  he  wrestled  with  it. 
It  was  very  unpleasant  because  it  took  the  charm  and 
colour  away  from  Selina,  and  left  him  with  a  universe 
in  which  only  Hubert  and  Mrs.  Bulloch  were  solid 
figures.  On  the  other  hand  there  was  that  other  universe 
wherein  his  mother  and  Andrew  were  paramount.  This 
was  becoming  too  complicated  and  he  struggled  back  to 
the  theology  of  his  youth  in  which  only  the  Lord  held 
sway  and  human  beings  were  as  miserable  vermin.  He 
floundered  from  one  to  the  other  and  it  was  with  a  feel- 
ing of  touching  solid  ground  once  more  that,  when  he 
reached  the  house  in  Harporley  Road,  the  front  door 
was  opened  to  him  and  he  saw  Tibby's  gaunt  face  ap- 
parently hanging  in  the  darkness  of  the  passage.  She 
at  any  rate  was  real.  She  carried  a  whole  mysterious 
world  with  her.  You  had  but  to  look  into  her  strange 
eyes  to  feel  that  she  had  a  boundless  knowledge.  Aye, 
she  was  as  positive  a  thing  as  dead  Andrew  lying  there. 
Jamie  hung  up  his  hat  on  the  peg  assigned  to  his  use. 
Tibby  softly  shut  the  door  and  followed  him  into  the 
dining-room. — "It's  true,"  said  Jamie.  "He's  dead. 
My  mother  is  to  stay  with  John,  and  Tom  is  to  take 
charge  at  the  house." — "She'll  be  feeling  it,  will  Mar- 
garet," said  Tibby. — "Feeling  what?"  asked  Jamie. — 
"Her  own  brother.  He  was  much  older  than  she,  but 


ANDREW'S  WILL  235 

she'll  be  feeling  it,  with  John  married  and  all." — "My 
feeling  is,"  said  Jamie,  "that  we  couldn't  be  more  foreign 
to  this  place  if  it  were  Constantinople." — "You'll  want 
your  supper,"  muttered  Tibby  and  she  went  out  to  come 
back  in  a  moment  with  ham,  bread  and  coffee.  He  ate 
and  drank  to  please  her  but  he  was  not  hungry.  He 
asked  her  not  to  leave  him,  and  she  stood  by  the  table 
while  he  picked  at  his  food  and  fidgeted  in  his  chair. — 
"Tibby,"  he  asked  at  length,  "what  do  you  think  I  am?" 
— "A  true  Lawrie,"  said  she.  "And  the  son  of  your 
father." — "And  what  will  I  be?"  he  asked  as  though 
he  were  appealing  to  an  oracle. — "A  grand  man,"  said 
she. — "Then  why,"  he  asked  expressively,  "why  am  I 
treated  as  though  I  were  already  half  in  disgrace?" — 
"You  didn't  stand  by  Andrew,"  said  she,  "and — and — 
there's  nothing  that  you  do  but  we  hear  of  it  here.  It's 
been  a  grief  to  us  that  you,  the  best  and  cleverest  of 
the  three,  should  be  the  least  respected." — "To  you,  Tib- 
by?"— "I'm  no  the  one  to  be  grieved." — "Do  you  respect 
me  less?" — "No." — "He  was  respected;  Andrew  was 
respected :  you  can  buy  respect." — Jamie  was  in  a  great 
rage:  he  felt  the  house  full  of  tongues  against  him. — 
"Why  do  you  listen?"  he  cried. — "First  it's  one,  then 
it's  another,"  replied  Tibby.  "The  deafest  ears  could  not 
help  but  hear.  The  folk  here  think  they  are  a  model 
to  all  the  world  and  any  wickedness  there  may  be  in  the 
town  is  not  of  their  doing.  They  are  all  for  work  and 
church-going  and  will  countenance  no  other." — "I  do 
my  work  and  I  go  to  church,"  said  Jamie,  "but  I'm 
damned  if  I'll  make  a  song  about  it." — "There's  the 
trouble,"  said  Tibby,  "and  you  may  be  sure  they'll  make 
a  song  about  the  rest." 

They  talked  far  into  the  night  and  Jamie  at  last  lighted 
Tibby  up  to  her  room. — "There  are  times,"  he  said, 


236  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"when  I  feel  as  if  I  had  no  other  friend  in  the  world  but 
you.  You  alone  seem  not  to  laugh  at  me." — "I  wouldn't 
be  so  sure  of  that,"  said  she  and  she  smiled.  Jamie 
laughed  and  caught  her  in  his  arms  and  kissed  her. — "I 
shall  laugh  at  you,  if  you  do  that,"  said  she,  and  he  felt 
angry  with  himself.  She  was  so  bony,  so  ugly,  that  a 
kiss  with  her  was  out  of  place. 

There  were  two  steps  outside  her  door.  She  stood 
above  him  with  her  candle  in  her  hand,  casting  the 
shadow  of  her  great  nose  over  the  right  side  of  her 
face. — "You're  a  strange  man,  Jamie,"  she  said,  "and 
you  will  make  a  deal  of  trouble." — "Let  them  talk,"  he 
answered,  "I've  you  for  my  friend  and  it  does  not  matter 
what  kind  of  fool  I  make  of  myself.  The  man  of  inde- 
pendent mind  has  the  laugh  of  them  all  in  the  end.  An- 
drew's dead  and  I'll  see  him  buried  and  I'll  know  the 
truth  of  him  against  all  the  fools  may  say.  He  was  a 
hypocrite  and  a  sentimentalist  and  a  vile  husband,  and 
the  kind  of  fool  who  thinks  that  when  he  sees  a  fault 
in  a  better  man  than  himself  he  has  him  measured."- 
Tibby  astonished  him  by  saying:  "Don't  be  that  kind 
of  fool  yourself,  Jamie,  and  don't  do  what  you  did 
just  now  again."  With  that  she  slipped  inside  her  door 
and  locked  it.  Jamie  felt  that  he  had  a  great  deal  more 
to  say.  He  tapped  on  the  door  but  could  get  no  answer. 
A  white  figure  appeared  on  the  attic  stairs  above  him, 
calling  in  a  frightened  voice:  "'Go's  there?"  It  was 
the  little  maid  who  assisted  Tibby  in  the  kitchen. — "Go 
to  bed!"  said  Jamie.  "Ooh!  Mr.  Lawrie,  'ow  you  did 
frighten  me."  The  white  figure  sped  upstairs  and  Jamie 
went  to  his  room.  The  house  was  full  of  an  ominous 
dreariness  for  him:  full  of  Andrew  and  the  cold  empti- 
ness which  his  death  had  created  in  the  lives  of  those 


ANDREW'S  WILL  237 

who  dwelt  in  it.  His  death?  Had  not  his  life  created 
it  to  be  shaped  and  defined  by  death? 

In  the  morning  there  came  a  note  from  Selina  to  chide 
him  for  going  away  from  Hubert's  without  saying  good- 
bye to  her.  At  once  Jamie  sat  down  and  wrote  to  her  as 
he  had  never  done  before,  giving  rein  to  his  feelings. 
He  poured  out  praises  of  her  charms,  her  beauty,  par- 
ticularly the  dimple  in  her  shoulder-blade,  her  art,  her 
subtle  skill  in  the  difficult  and  admirable  business  of 
living,  and  he  declared  that  she  was  his  only  joy  and 
comfort.  Having  said  that  much,  his  letter  became  a 
love  letter  and  he  was  hardly  responsible  for  its  further 
composition.  He  posted  it  and  received  next  morning 
another  note  in  which  Selina  informed  him  coldly  that 
Henry  Acomb  had  invited  her  to  go  with  him  to  London 
and  that  she  had  promised  to  go.  Jamie  rushed  out  of 
the  house  as  Tibby  was  bringing  in  his  breakfast  and 
arrived  at  Selina's  lodgings  before  she  was  up.  Mrs. 
Bulloch  appeared  in  a  pink  flannel  dressing-gown  with 
her  hair  in  curl-papers  torn  out  of  the  last  number  of 
The  Critic.  Jamie  could  see  his  nom  de  plume  Quintus 
Flumen  waving  over  her  right  eyebrow. — "Tell  Selina 
I  must  see  her,"  he  cried. — "I  could  have  told  you  what 
would  happen,"  said  Mrs.  Bulloch,  standing  at  the  bottom 
of  the  stairs  and  blinking  at  Jamie  as  he  fidgeted  in  the 
doorway  of  the  sitting-room,  "leaving  her  like  that." — 

"But  I  wrote  to  explain.     My  brother "—"Not  all 

the  brothers  in  Christendom  are  any  excuse  when  it's  a 
question  of  a  girl's  fancy." — "I  want  to  see  Selina." — 
"She's  asleep,  poor  lamb,  and  has  been  crying  these  three 
days.  We  were  at  our  wits'  end  what  to  do  until  Henry 
thought  of  London." — Jamie  was  too  much  excited  to 
take  that  hint  as  to  what  had  happened.  Just  as  he 
had  decided  in  his  own  mind  that  his  passion  for  Selina 


238  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

was  the  one  bright  spot  in  an  otherwise  darkened  exist- 
ence she  was  spirited  away  from  him. — "I  must  and  will 
see  her,"  he  declared,  "if  I  have  to  wait  until  nightfall." 
— "I'll  get  dressed,"  cried  Mrs.  Bulloch.  As  she  spoke 
there  was  a  loud  rat-tat  on  the  door,  which  she  opened 
to  admit  Henry  Acomb,  pale  of  face  and  wilder  of  eye 
than  ever. — "How  is  she?"  he  asked,  and  drew  up  sharp 
on  seeing  Jamie. — "You  have  the  effrontery?"  he 
snapped,  "you  have  broken  my  poor  girl's  heart  and  you 
have  the  effrontery!"  He  folded  his  arms  and  glared. 
•  Mrs.  Bulloch  shuffled  upstairs  taking  great  care  not  to 
expose  her  legs. — "Come  inside,"  said  Jamie,  "and  tell 
me  what  has  happened." — "I  will  not  come  inside,"  said 
Acomb.  "I  will  not  bandy  words  with  you.  You  have 
trampled  on  a  young  and  innocent,  not  to  say  ardent, 
affection  and  I  have  charged  myself  with  the  burden  of 
your  sin,  though  how  the  devil  we  are  to  get  to  London 
I  don't  know." — "Nonsense,"  said  Jamie,  "there  is  some 
absurd  mistake.  I  have  come  to  explain."  Acomb  was 
wildly  excited  by  the  part  he  was  playing.  He  had  been 
up  all  night.  He  had  spent  the  day  before  with  the 
weeping  Selina  in  his  arms.  He  had  convinced  himself 
and  her  that  they  had  lighted  one  of  the  great  passions 
of  the  world  and  though,  to  Selina,  Jamie  had  become 
only  a  stepping-stone,  to  Acomb  he  was  now  an  impedi- 
ment and  an  offence. — "I  have  done  nothing,"  said  Jamie, 
"for  which  I  am  not  prepared  to  make  ample  reparation." 
— Acomb  spat  in  his  face  and  roared :  "Beast !  Beast ! 
Take  your  filthy  lusts  hence.  The  theatre,  degraded 
though  it  is,  shall  not  be  the  seraglio  of  you  and  such 
as  you." — "Good  God!"  thought  Jamie,  utterly  bewil- 
dered, "what  have  they  been  doing?  Is  the  whole  world 
tumbling  down  upon  my  head?" — He  had  no  thought 


ANDREW'S  WILL  239 

of  retaliation,  as  he  wiped  his  face.  Acomb  was  mad : 
there  could  be  no  contest. 

From  upstairs  came  Selina's  clear  voice  calling:  "Is 
that  you,  Henry?"  Acomb  bounded  up  three  stairs  at 
a  time. 

Mrs.  Bulloch  returned  half  dressed.  She  requested 
Jamie  to  fasten  her  up  behind  and  he  did  so. — "Now," 
he  said,  "will  you  tell  me  what  I  have  done?" — "Lor' 
bless  your  simple  heart,"  said  Mrs.  Bulloch.  "It  ain't 
what  you've  done.  It  had  to  be  and  when  you  went  away 
it  only  needed  Henry  to  promise  London,  and  the  trick 
was  done." — "But  they  can't  go  to  London  without  a 
penny  in  the  world." — "Ho!  Can't  they?  I'm  going 
too,  contracted  though  I  am  for  ten  more  weeks.  This 
is  no  place  for  the  likes  of  them  with  their  ambitions." — 
Jamie  could  not  help  seeing  that  the  old  woman  was 
coupling  Selina  and  Acomb  as  easily  as  she  had  coupled 
Selina  and  himself.  His  dignity  was  rather  outraged, 
though  he  had  begun  faintly  to  see  the  affair  from  her 
point  of  view  and  to  understand  that  as  the  intruder  into 
this  strange  world  he  was  naturally  ejected.  But  there 
remained  his  letter  to  Selina,  the  passion  of  which  had 
flooded  all  his  relations  with  her.  That  was  not  so  lightly 
to  be  surrendered.  She  was,  he  believed  she  was,  his 
only  comfort.  It  had  not  struck  him  that  Selina  might 
desire  to  be  more  than  that.  He  was  filled  with  a  sort 
of  nausea  and  suffered  terribly. — "I  can  explain,"  he 
said.  "My  brother  came.  Terrible  news.  My  uncle  was 
dying.  I  can  explain,  everything.  It  is  absurd  for  her 
to  go  to  London  before  her  talent  is  formed." — "Henry 
Acomb,"  replied  Mrs.  Bulloch,  "says  she  has  genius." — 
"But  /  said  she  had  something  like  genius,  years  ago," 
cried  Jamie.  "Do  go  and  ask  her  to  see  me.  There's  a 
dear  good  old  Ma !  Tell  her  I'm  in  an  agony  of  distress." 


240  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

— "My  poor  young  man,"  answered  Mrs.  Bulloch,  "can't 
you  see  that  it  isn't  the  least  little  bit  of  good?  It's  'Go/ 
with  Selina.  If  you'd  said  'Go'  to  her  she'd  have  gone, 
even  if  it  were  to  the  Brazils.  But  you've  left  it  to  a 
better  man  than  yourself  to  say  'Go,'  and  she's  going." 
Jamie  gulped,  and  he  began  to  perceive  stome  meaning 
in  his  misfortunes.  He  was  humiliated. — "Critics,"  said 
Mrs.  Bulloch,  "are  all  the  same.  They  think  because 
they  write  about  us  they  know  all  there  is  to  know. 
You  never  made  a  greater  mistake  in  your  life." — Jamie 
took  up  his  hat.  He  said  humbly:  "Will  you  tell  her 
that  if  she  wishes  to  see  me  I  will  come  at  any  time?" — 
"You  couldn't  say  fairer  than  that,"  replied  Mrs.  Bul- 
loch, "and  I  always  did  think  well  of  you." — "Tell  her," 
said  he,  "I  wish  her  every  happiness.  Is  he — is  he — 
going  to  marry  her?" — "Marry,  no.  There's  a  Mrs. 
Acomb  in  Wigan  eating  up  half  his  earnings  though  she 
keeps  a  shop  and  makes  a  good  thing  of  it." — That 
finished  it  for  Jamie.  The  affair  became  entirely  fan- 
tastic. He  was  left  rueful  but  not  altogether  sorry  for 
his  emotional  failure.  He  began  to  see  how  easily  with 
more  bluster  and  theatricality  he  could  have  carried  the 
day.  Acomb  was  so  excited  that  he  could  easily  have 
been  outmatched,  but  a  Selina  who  could  be  won  on  such 
terms  was  not  worth  the  winning. — "I  have  made  a  fool 
of  myself,"  said  Jamie,  "but  I  do  not  repent  of  one 
moment  of  it."  He  shook  Mrs.  Bulloch  warmly  by  the 
hand,  wished  her  all  the  luck  in  the  world  and  plenty  of 
fat  parts  and  then  walked  over  to  see  his  brother  John. 
He  found  his  mother  and  his  brothers  arguing  as  to 
whether  the  Allison-Greigs,  who  had  remained  friendly 
with  Hubert,  should  be  invited  to  the  funeral.  As  Tom 
had  already  invited  them  the  matter  seemed  to  be  beyond 
argument,  and  Sophia  was  saying  so.  Being  pregnant 


ANDREW'S  WILL  241 

she  had  come  to  regard  herself  as  precious,  as  John's 
behaviour  had  led  her  to  think  she  was.  It  was  her 
opportunity  to  assert  herself  and  she  had  seized  it.  John's 
exaggerated  attentiveness  showed  that  he  disliked  the 
change  in  his  household,  but  once  Sophia  had  taken  to 
the  enormous  horsehair  sofa — (Tom's  wedding  present) 
— there  was  no  getting  her  off  it.  She  engaged  another 
servant  to  look  after  her  and  John  gave  up  tobacco. 
She  presided.  For  the  first  time  she  had  the  pleasure  of 
receiving  her  mother-in-law  instead  of  yielding  to  her 
and  giving  up  the  house  to  her.  She  revelled  in  it  and 
it  gave  her  an  acute  pleasure  to  cut  into  their  argument 
with  the  question: — "Have  you  asked  them,  Tom?" 
The  Lawries  had  to  abandon  their  argument  and  that  was 
the  situation  when  Jamie  came  in  upon  them  from  his 
own  perplexities. 

Sophia  then  directed  conversation  towards  Andrew's 
will.  How  much  had  he  left?  John  thought  a  hundred 
thousand,  but  Jamie,  who  was  in  a  position  to  know  more 
about  it,  doubled  that  figure. — "He  won't  have  forgotten 
you,  mother,"  said  Tom.  "He  was  very  pleased  with 
your  spirit  in  paying  off  all  your  pension  money." — Mar- 
garet, who  had  gone  back  to  her  deepest  widow's  weeds, 
sighed  with  satisfaction. — "I'm  sure,"  she  said,  "there 
are  others  who  need  it  more  than  I  do,  who  have  not 
such  good  sons." — "If  I  were  he,"  said  Jamie,  "I 
should  leave  it  all  to  Donald  Greig  who  is  the  richest  of 
his  kinsmen.  It  could  make  no  difference  to  him  and 
would  save  a  deal  of  recrimination." — "I  suppose  you 
think,"  growled  Tom  heavily,  "you  are  left  out  of  it." — 
"I'm  sure  I  am,"  said  John  cheerfully,  "though  he  may 
have  remembered  Sophia.  Not  that  I  care  very  much 
for  I  shall  soon  have  shaken  the  dust  of  Thrigsby  from 
my  feet."— "Dust  of  Thrigsby?"  cried  Jamie.  "What 


242  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

do  you  mean?" — "As  you  are  all  here,"  replied  John, 
"I  may  as  well  tell  you.  Murdochs  have  asked  me  to 
go  out  to  Australia  to  open  up  a  branch  there." — "Aus- 
tralia!" said  Margaret.  "Why,  they  are  all  gaol-birds 
out  there!" — "Only  in  Botany  Bay.  I'm  to  go  to  Vic- 
toria," answered  John.  "As  soon  as  Sophia  is  ready  we 
shall  take  ship  and  make  the  voyage." — Jamie's  eyes 
shone  with  envy. — "Round  the  Good  Hope?"  he  asked. 
— "Round  the  Good  Hope,"  said  John  and  he  produced 
an  atlas  and  laid  it  on  Sophia's  sofa  where  they  all 
pored  over  it  and  learned  the  exact  whereabouts  of  Aus- 
tralia.— "I  suppose,"  said  Margaret,  "my  wishes  are  not 
to  be  consulted." — John  was  rather  annoyed  with  her. — 
"If  you  wish  to  have  me  dead,"  he  said,  "then  tell  me 
to  stay.  It  is  not  only  for  the  material  advantage. 
Thrigsby  is  killing  me.  I  saw  the  doctor  the  other  day 
and  he  tells  me  I  have  only  a  lung  and  a  half."- 
"John !"  cried  Margaret.  Sophia  looked  maliciously  and 
defiantly  at  her  mother-in-law.  Jamie  met  Tom's  eyes. 
They  were  hard,  hostile  and  inquisitive  and  in  them 
Jamie  read  his  own  thought:  "I'm  all  right,  but  what 
about  you?" — "It  was  a  great  stroke  of  luck,"  said 
John,  "the  firm  making  that  move  just  when  they  did." 
— "Luck !  Yes,"  said  Tom.  "It  almost  looks  like  direct 
interposition.  They  pay  you  more,  of  course." — "Twice 
as  much.  So  that,  you  see,  I  am  not  particularly  inter- 
ested in  the  old  man's  will." — "Of  course,"  said  Mar- 
garet, "I  am  glad  to  see  you  all  getting  on  so  well,  and, 
Heaven  knows,  it  is  not  my  wish  to  stand  in  your  way, 
but  you  are  all  working  for  other  men  and  not  doing  as 
the  Keiths  did  in  their  day." — "That,  my  dear  mother," 
said  Jamie,  "is  because  we  have  to  undo  a  good  deal 
of  what  the  Keiths  did  in  their  day." — "Nonsense, 
Jamie,"  said  Tom,  "the  Keiths  laid  down  the  business 


ANDREW'S  WILL  243 

on  sound  lines.  It  is  a  question  of  development;  that  is 
all,  development." — "After  all,"  said  Sophia,  "the  Keiths 
and  the  Greigs  did  not  forget  art.  There  is  that  to  be 
said  for  them." — "They  forgot  Thrigsby,"  said  John, 
"and  the  result  is  that  it  is  unfit  for  a  Christian  or  a 
delicate  man,  like  your  husband,  to  live  in." — "You'll 
be  saying  next,"  cried,  almost  moaned  Margaret,  "that 
you  are  sorry  I  ever  brought  you  here." — "I,  at  least," 
said  Tom,  "thank  God  that  I  am  what  I  am  and  would 
not  be  otherwise." — "Dod!"  cried  Jamie  with  a  flicker 
of  passion.  "If  you'd  only  grant  every  man  the  right  to 
say  that." — "Some  men,"  retorted  Tom,  "have  not 
earned  the  right  to  say  it." — Jamie  was  sitting  on  So- 
phia's sofa.  She  patted  his  shoulder  and  said :  "I  think 
you  are  very  nice  and  if  I  had  not  married  John  I  would 
have  rather  had  you  than  any  man."  Jamie  resented  her 
words.  They  brought  out  into  the  open  the  secret  atti- 
tude of  the  others  towards  him.  He  turned  to  his 
mother.  "Will  I  tell  Tibby  you  are  to  be  home  to-morrow 
after  the  funeral?" — "If  I  am  well  enough,"  replied 
Margaret. 

So  Jamie  went  away  and  spent  a  night  and  a  morning 
of  complete  silence  upon  which  Tibby  did  not  once  dare 
to  break.  He  hoped  against  hope  that  Selina  would 
write,  but  no  word  came.  He  envied  John  and  thought 
foolishly  that  he  would  go  with  him  and  try  his  luck  in 
Australia:  but  that  would  be  to  leave  his  mother  to 
Tom,  and  to  abandon  Tibby  to  them.  She,  he  knew,  he 
felt  certain  was  on  his  side,  and  though  he  knew  not  at 
all  for  what  cause  he  was  fighting,  he  recognised  that 
because  of  Tibby's  faith  he  must  fight  on. 

His  mind  became  a  little  clearer  at  the  funeral,  which 
was  a  function  so  solemn  and  impressive  as  to  almost 
convince  him  that  Tom  was  right.  It  was  not  that  any- 


244  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

body  mourned,  or  that  there  was  any  great  grief.  What 
impressed  and  rather  crushed  Jamie  was  the  unanimous 
opinion  that  Andrew  Keith  was  a  very  great  man  with 
whom  some  of  the  light  had  gone  out  of  the  world. 
The  Mayor  of  Thrigsby  was  present,  officially ;  the  new 
Dean  of  Thrigsby — for  the  town  had  recently  become  a 
city,  with  cathedral,  bishop,  canons,  etc. — read  the  service 
at  the  graveside:  the  Presbyterians  were  represented: 
Sir  John  Clowes,  the  printer  and  proprietor  of  The 
Thrigsby  Post,  was  there  for  the  Governors  of  the  Gram- 
mar School,  and  Professor  Bosca  for  the  Council  of 
Thrigsby's  College;  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  the 
Literary  and  Philosophical  Society,  the  Boggart's  Wood 
Brotherhood,  all  had  their  deputies.  The  relatives 
seemed  comparatively  unimportant  though  they  drove 
in  the  first  carriages,  heavily  draped,  with  plumed  horses, 
out  to  the  cemetery  over  against  the  Duke's  Canal.  No 
royalty  could  have  had  a  more  magnificent  hearse,  upon 
which  were  silver  angels  and  black  plumes,  scrolls  and 
carved  draperies.  And  enormous  though  the  hearse  was 
it  could  not  contain  all  the  flowers,  real  and  artificial, 
which  had  been  sent.  They  filled  two  carriages.  Hun- 
dreds of  Andrew's  work-people  followed  on  foot,  to 
watch  the  triumph  which  their  laborious  days  had  helped 
to  create. 

Margaret,  Tom,  John  and  Sophia  were  in  the  first  car- 
riage, Jamie  finding  himself  ousted.  He  was  hurt  at 
first  until  he  found  that  in  the  second  carriage  he  would 
be  with  Donald  Greig  and  Agnes  and  his  Uncle  Shiel. 
It  was  a  cold,  clear  day,  but  sunny.  Agnes,  like  all  the 
women,  had  composed  herself  for  the  occasion.  She 
looked  very  beautiful  in  black  with  her  hands  in  her  lap 
and  in  her  hands  her  Prayer  Book.  She  gave  Jamie  a 
swift  smile  that  set  him  reeling,  but  at  once  she  was  like 


ANDREW'S  WILL  245 

a  marble  figure  and  not  a  word  would  she  say.  Donald 
had  a  black-edged  handkerchief  with  which  he  fidgeted. 
Only  Uncle  Shiel  would  not  be  silent.  He  had  made  his 
first  long  railway  journey  and  wanted  to  talk  about  it. 
He  was  sitting  opposite  Jamie  and  leaned  forward  to 
say:  "You've  grown  into  such  fine  people,  I  feel  shy 
among  you." — "You've  no  need  to  be  that,  Uncle  Shiel." 
— "I  knew  Andrew  was  a  grand  man  but  I  had  no  notion 
he  was  so  grand  as  this,  with  the  Mayor  in  his  chain 
and  all.  I  had  never  respect  enough  for  the  family  to 
satisfy  him,  but  I  must  confess  it  gives  me  great  satis- 
faction to  be  here  and  see  his  glory,  for  I  never  believed 
in  it  before." — "Do  you  believe  in  it  now?"  asked  Jamie. 
— "That's  not  a  question  to  put  to  your  uncle,"  replied 
Shiel  with  his  sly  twinkle,  though  he  kept  his  face  very 
solemn  and  looked  out  of  the  window  as  Donald  was 
doing,  vacantly,  as  though  his  part  in  the  ceremony  had 
robbed  him  of  the  power  to  receive  impressions.  Just 
before  they  reached  the  cemetery  he  remarked: — "In 
Edinburgh  streets  you  can  see  hills  and  the  castle.  Is 
there  nothing  to  be  seen  from  Thrigsby  streets  ?" — "Only 
streets,"  replied  Jamie,  "and  chimneys.  When  you  get 
used  to  the  place  they  are  quite  enough." — "I  would  miss 
the  birds,"  said  Shiel,  "and  I  feel  dirty.  I  wonder  would 
the  men  on  my  farm  follow  me  to  my  grave." — Donald 
turned  and  glared  at  Shiel,  whose  talking  had  irritated 
him  almost  beyond  endurance.  Shiel  said  shyly:  "Sor- 
ry," and  blew  his  nose.  Donald  said:  "Tb  look  at  us 
people  would  think  we  were  going  to  a  wedding." — "Not 
with  the  corpse  in  front,"  answered  Shiel. — "For 
shame !"  cried  Donald.  "Your  own  brother !  Have  you 
no  feeling?" — "Not  on  the  surface,"  retorted  Shiel,  who 
hated  the  commercial  Keiths  and  Greigs.  Donald  began 
to  swell  at  the  neck  until  Agnes  leaned  forward  and 


246  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

laid  her  hand  on  his. — "I'll  haud  my  peace,"  said  Shiel. 
"I've  a  long  memory  of  Andrew,  which  is  disquieting." 

Jamie  was  very  uneasy:  Donald  was  obviously  right; 
but  his  own  thoughts  were  with  Uncle  Shiel  who  was  a 
delight  to  him.  Uncle  Shiel  stood  for  that  in  him  which 
on  this  day  of  wrath  and  mourning  was  struggling  to 
find  expression,  and  made  all  the  pomp  and  show  of 
grief  seem  incomplete.  In  his  mind  his  Uncle  Shiel  was 
ranged  alongside  Tibby.  They  had  dignity,  and  they 
and  they  alone  could  honour  the  dead  man  because  he 
was  a  man  and  dead,  and  not  for  his  supposed  virtues 
and  achievements.  All  the  same  even  he  was  shocked 
when,  as  they  walked  slowly  towards  the  little  chapel  in 
the  middle  of  the  cemetery,  Uncle  Shiel  said:  "I  can 
never  go  to  a  funeral  without  thinking  that  the  under- 
taker men  will  go  home  playing  cards  in  the  hearse.  I 
saw  them  doing  that  once  and  I  have  never  forgotten  it." 
And  as  they  all  sat  in  the  chapel  Jamie  found  himself 
wondering  what  they  were  all  thinking.  There  was  a 
certain  uniformity  in  the  expression  of  the  people;  the 
relatives  had  one  kind  of  expression ;  the  official  mourners 
another;  while  the  mill-hands  who  filled  up  the  pews  at 
the  back  gaped  rather  awfully.  Only  Tom's  face  was 
intelligent.  His  eyes  were  shining,  his  nostrils  were  dis- 
tended, there  was  almost  a  smile  on  his  lips. — "He  has 
been  waiting  for  this  day,"  thought  Jamie  and  he  turned 
sick  at  heart  as  he  saw  Tom's  eyes,  cold  and  confident, 
turn  on  Agnes. 

The  Dean  spoke  a  few  words  which  developed  into  a 
sermon,  for  this  was  no  ordinary  funeral,  and  at  last 
they  were  released  from  the  chapel.  It  was  wonderful 
to  see  the  uniform  expressions  dropped  for  a  moment 
as  all  rose,  but,  when  the  coffin  was  lifted,  they  were 
resumed  and  the  thin  line  of  men  and  women  all  in  black 


ANDREW'S  WILL  247 

followed  to  the  graveside.  Great  heavy  clouds  came  up 
at  the  moment  of  the  lowering.  The  light  grew  dim. 
The  crowd  was  hushed  and  the  Amens  came  out  fear- 
fully. There  were  sighs  and  tears.  The  Dean  shuffled 
away  his  book  into  the  pocket  of  his  cassock,  shook  hands 
with  the  Mayor  and  with  Donald  Greig  and  hurried 
away. — "At  any  rate,"  thought  Jamie  with  a  sudden 
stab  of  malice,  "that's  the  end  of  him."  And  he  found 
then  that  he  had  become  one  with  the  crowd :  he  shared 
their  interest:  to  know  what  had  been  the  great  man's 
last  wishes.  With  this  curiosity  to  relieve  them  the  rela- 
tives and  friends  threw  off  their  gloom  and  Donald  Greig 
talked  amiably  to  Uncle  Shiel  and  asked  after  the  price 
of  oats.  As  they  mounted  into  the  carriage  again  Jamie 
thought  he  saw  Hubert  outside  the  gates  of  the  cemetery. 
He  could  not  be  quite  sure,  but  it  was  enough  to  rouse 
antagonism  again.  It  would  be  like  Hubert  to  wish 
to  see  the  end  of  his  enemy,  to  stand  by  his  grave  and 
think  those  bizarre  thoughts  of  his.  That  made  Jamie 
realise  how  strong  Andrew  had  been :  how  strong  all 
these  people  were  in  their  unanimity  and  how  dangerous 
was  his  instinct  to  oppose  them.  He  wondered  about 
Agnes:  Was  she  one  of  them? — She  began  to  talk  to 
him,  and  asked  him  when  he  was  coming  to  stay  with 
them  again.  She  had  often  thought  of  their  talk  by  the 
lake,  which  since  then  had  meant  so  much  more  to  her. 
She  had  taken  up  painting  again.  Somehow  Jamie  had 
made  her  impatient  of  her  idleness.  Jamie  was  just  get- 
ting over  his  shyness  when  Shiel,  to  escape  from  Don- 
ald's foolish  questions,  cut  in  with:  "And  are  your 
paintings  as  pretty  as  yourself,  Agnes?" — "She  writes 
verses  too,"  said  Donald  heavily.  He  squashed  the  hap- 
piness in  Jamie,  Shiel  and  Agnes. 

The  drive  home  was  swift.     Cake  and  Madeira  wine 


248  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

were  partaken  of  in  the  drawing-room.  A  little  table 
was  set  for  Mr.  Wilkinson,  the  lawyer  of  all  the  Keiths 
and  all  the  Greigs  and  Allison-Greigs,  and  after  three 
polite  little  coughs  and  a  rap  on  the  table  in  the  manner 
of  an  auctioneer  he  began  to  read  aloud  in  clear,  mincing 
tones:  "This  is  the  last  will  and  testament  of  me,  An- 
drew Keith."  The  women  sat  absolutely  impassive :  the 
men  with  their  heads  forward  and  their  eyes  downcast, 
each  as  his  name  was  mentioned  giving  an  involuntary 
jerk.  There  were  charitable  bequests :  a  Keith  scholar- 
ship was  to  be  founded  at  the  Grammar  School  to  en- 
courage the  study  of  modern  languages :  a  Keith  exhibi- 
tion was  to  be  offered  to  the  College  of  Corpus  Christi, 
Oxford,  to  be  open  only  to  scholars  of  Thrigsby  Gram- 
mar School :  Thrigsby  College  was  to  have  its  Keith  Pro- 
fessor of  Political  Economy:  no  relative  was  omitted 
except  the  Allison-Greigs  who  had  openly  continued  to 
know  Hubert:  Donald  Greig  who  had  met  Hubert  se- 
cretly and  often  taken  his  advice  in  business  matters 
was  left  forty  thousand  pounds:  John  came  in  for  two 
thousand :  Margaret  for  two  thousand  upon  trust  for  her 
life  with  remainder  to  the  residuary  legatees :  Tom  was 
given  five  thousand  pounds  and  a  fifth  share  in  the  busi- 
ness :  Mary  and  Maggie  had  one  thousand  between  them : 
while  Jamie  was  bequeathed  Clibran  Hall,  the  furniture 
and  effects  contained  therein,  and  not  a  penny. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

A  LETTER  FROM  BERLIN 


MARY  wrote  to  her  beloved  brother: — "What  you 
say  about  money  seems  to  me  true  and  profound. 
People  do  not  care  for  it  in  itself,  but  they  have  spent 
so  much  energy  and  often  so  far  lowered  themselves  to 
get  it,  that,  when  they  have  it,  they  must  set  some  store 
by  and  even  be  jealous  of  it.  All  the  same,  I  am  glad 
of  my  five  hundred  pounds,  for,  when  I  have  finished  my 
work  here  I  shall  be  able  to  go  to  Italy.  I  should  go,  I 
think,  even  if  I  had  to  walk,  to  follow  in  the  footsteps 
of  Goethe,  who  is,  indeed,  as  Carlyle  said,  the  greatest 
genius  who  has  lived  for  three  centuries.  I  am  very 
happy  here  in  Germany,  glad  to  be  away  from  common- 
sense  to  which,  as  I  think  I  told  you,  in  Edinburgh  every- 
thing was  reduced.  Have  you  ever  heard  of  Kant  ?  He 
was  of  Scots  descent  and  laid  a  solid  basis  for  modern 
thought.  You  can  have  no  idea  how  alive  things  are 
here :  not  only  doing  but  thinking.  What  enthusiasm 
for  ideas,  and  education!  I  think  Berlin  will  be  one 
of  the  great  cities  of  the  world.  They  are  already  begin- 
ning to  challenge  the  supremacy  of  Paris,  but  Berlin 
will  never  be  Germany  as  Paris  is  France.  The  German 
idea  is  bigger  than  that.  I  wish  you  could  give  me  the 
idea  of  Thrigsby.  I  do  not  understand  England  at  all. 
There  is  the  keenest  interest  and  curiosity  here  about  the 

249 


250  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

English,  the  highest  admiration  too,  but  I  cannot  make 
them  understand  that  Scotland  is  not  and  never  will  be 
England.  So  what  is  Thrigsby's  idea?  Democracy  and 
liberty  I  know,  but  liberty  to  do  what?  To  be  rich? 
That  does  not  seem  enough.  Who  are  the  English 
thinkers?  James  Mill?  You  cannot  set  him  up  against 
Fichte.  And  why  will  not  the  English  read  Goethe  ?  Are 
they  afraid  of  being  Europeans?  Had  they  been  better 
Europeans  there  would  not  have  been  this  idiotic  war. 
I  see  that  John  Bright  is  against  it  but  only  for  insular 
reasons. — Non-intervention.  Somehow,  here  on  the 
Continent,  war  is  easier  to  understand.  And  Germany 
could  never  go  to  war  as  lightly  as  we  have  done  in  the 
Crimea.  Perhaps  it  is  because  there  is  no  likelihood  of 
its  being  fought  out  on  our  own  territory  and  we  have 
not  imagination  enough  to  feel  the  full  horror  of  the 
death  in  battle  and  by  sickness  and  through  incompe- 
tence and  mistakes  of  thousands  of  fine  young  men.  It 
is  all  so  far  away  from  London,  where,  I  suppose,  the 
daily  life  goes  on  much  the  same.  One  feels  here  that 
life  is  more  organised,  and  it  is  therefore  more  sensitive. 
I  do  believe  Berlin  feels  this  tragic  folly  more  than  Lon- 
don. It  is  a  shock  to  the  Germans.  They  had  believed 
England  to  have  more  sense.  They  regard  France  and 
the  French  Government  with  suspicion.  I  do  wish  I 
knew  what  Thrigsby  was  thinking  about  it.  For,  surely, 
it  must  be  bad  for  trade,  though  I  am  reluctant  to  believe 
that  opinion  in  the  North  of  England  is  susceptible  to 
nothing  but  the  fluctuations  of  trade.  But  you  are  not  a 
good  correspondent  as  regards  matters  in  general.  Your 
descriptions  of  the  family  are  inimitable.  I  feel  that  I 
was  myself  at  Andrew's  funeral,  with  Uncle  Shiel  and 
Donald  and  Tom  and  John  and  his  Sophia,  whom,  as 
you  know,  I  do  not  like.  I  get  a  very  good  idea  too 


A  LETTER  FROM  BERLIN  251 

of  your  life  in  the  bank,  but  also  an  uncomfortable  feel- 
ing that  it  is  swallowing  you  up,  and  to  a  man  of  your 
imagination  that  ought  not  to  happen.  Banking,  I  have 
heard  it  said  here  by  revolutionary  young  men,  should  not 
be  in  private  hands.  Rothschild  came  from  Frankfort 
and  to  all  good  Germans  he  is  still  a  joke.  I  don't  like 
to  think  of  you  being  wasted  on  a  joke.  Indeed,  my 
dear,  your  letters  make  me  anxious  because  I  feel  in 
them  a  separate  existence  apart  from  that  which  you  are 
ostensibly  leading.  This  must  mean  that  you  are  un- 
happy; not  that  I  think  individual  unhappiness  matters 
much;  but  it  does  mean  that  you  are  in  revolt  against 
your  conditions,  you  in  whom  I  know  to  live  so  many 
fine  and  generous  qualities,  so  much  suppleness  of  mind 
and  genuine  humour,  qualities  that  in  any  healthy  en- 
vironment would  carry  a  man  far.  They  would  here, 
I  am  sure.  They  might  carry  him  into  exile  as  they  did 
poor  Heine,  but  he  would  only  gain  in  influence  by  that ; 
and  I  am  sure  that  influence  is  much  more  worth  having 
than  power.  That  is  why  I  prefer  your  Cobden  to  your 
Bright,  though  when  you  compare  either  with  Lassalle, 
they  are  stiff  and  rather  mummified.  They  have  not  the 
magic  which  makes  a  man's  work  gain  in  vitality  after 
his  death.  Hardheartedness  is  all  very  well  in  its  way, 
but  it  is  not  the  way  of  idealism  and  cannot  lead  to  the 
Europe  of  Goethe's  thought.  I  have  begun  to  read  Dante 
to  compare  him  with  Goethe,  and  I  must  say  I  think  he 
was  the  greater  poet,  and  stripped  of  his  medievalism  and 
the  Church,  which  we  will  not  have,  his  vision  does  very 
well  even  now.  I'm  not  expecting  you  to  be  a  Goethe  or 
a  Dante,  though  I  do  think  it  is  time  England  repaid  the 
world  for  her  immense  privileges:  but  I  do  want  you 
to  have  something  more  than  your  excellent  comic  vision 
of  Thrigsby.  It  is  bad  enough  to  think  that  the  best 


252  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

England  can  produce  in  literature  is  Charles  Dickens' 
comic  vision  of  London.  It  is  all  so  self-centred,  and 
came  from  bearing  things  which  are  unbearable.  You 
will  turn  into  a  spinster,  and  Maggie  and  I  are  quite 
enough  in  one  family.  I  suppose  poor  Maggie  will  never 
marry.  She  would  never  take  off  her  wig  to  any  man : 
and  I,  well — I  am  come  down  now  to  my  modest  childish 
ambition  to  have  my  house  in  the  Cumberland  Hills, 
what  we  used  to  call  our  Blue  Mountains,  though  we 
did  not  know  then  that  they  were  inhabited  by  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  and  the  Arnolds — not  that  I  think 
much  of  the  Arnolds. — I  had  the  bound  volume  of  The 
Critic  you  sent  me  the  other  day.  Dramatic  criticism! 
Pooh!  What  is  there  to  criticise  in  vain  silly  actors? 
You  should  see  what  they  make  of  Shakespeare  here. 
You  should  read  Lessing.  The  Germans  do  understand 
how  to  make  fun  of  themselves,  but  since  Cruikshank 
and  Rowlandson  did  for  Napoleon  I  don't  believe  the 
English  have  made  fun  of  anything.  So  you  see  I  do 
appreciate  your  comic  vision  though  I  am  disappointed 
not  to  have  a  little  more  vision  and  a  little  less  comic.— 
I  am  very  hard  at  work  translating  and  writing  and  keep- 
ing H.  B.  in  touch  with  all  the  exciting  philosophical 
events  here.  I  eat  a  great  deal  for  one  so  small.  Saus- 
age is  a  very  good  stand-by.  But  I  find  time  to  think  of 
you  much  and  fondly,  groping  my  way  to  your  inner- 
most life,  from  which  I  do  obstinately  hope  and  believe 
something  good  will  come,  something  really  worth  while. 
It  was  wonderfully  malicious  of  old  Andrew  to  leave 
you  Clibran  Hall,  especially  if,  as  you  say,  the  district  is 
now  quite  impossible  as  a  residential  quarter.  But  how 
fast  Thrigsby  must  be  growing,  for  I  remember  it  as  a 
little  girl,  all  fields  round  these  few  mansions.  And  now 
mills  and  chimneys!  Ah:  well.  Twenty  years  seem  a 


A  LETTER  FROM  BERLIN  253 

little  time  when  one  is  fairly  launched  as  we  are.  They 
fly  so  swiftly  that  one  does  not  notice  all  the  immense 
changes  that  take  place.  Berlin  is  growing  too  but 
they  make  it  grow  more  or  less  as  they  wish  it  to.  It  is 
nowhere  so  hopelessly  muddled  and  sordid  as  Thrigsby, 
but  then  the  Germans  are  not  hard-headed  and  do  not 
believe  in  any  sort  of  rough  and  ready  success.  They 
will  take  their  time  and  do  what  they  set  out  to  do  thor- 
oughly. They  are  organised,  as  I  said,  and  sensitive 
and  can  feel  disaster  coming  and  make  every  preparation 
for  it.  That  is  their  virtue  both  domestically  and  politic- 
ally. They  have  much  to  learn  from  us  in  manners,  but 
in  living  which  is  more  important,  it  is  we  who  have 
everything  to  learn.  All  the  same,  I  do  not  like  German 
women.  They  are  emotionally  greedy  and  they  make 
marriage  a  torment. — I  am  longing  to  get  you  married. 
You  must  not  leave  it  to  John  to  provide  the  next  genera- 
tion of  the  Lawries.  Tom's  children  will  be  such  that 
I  dread  being  their  Aunt.  I  am  even  tempted  to  come 
over  and  make  a  match  for  you:  someone  will  have 
to  do  it,  for,  with  your  shyness,  you  will  never  do  it  for 
yourself — not  satisfactorily.  She  must  be  rich  and 
beautiful  and  she  must  realise  that  men  are  sensitive 
and  not  merely  conceited,  but  she  must  be  strong  and  be 
prepared  to  live  on  her  own  resources,  and  not  expect 
you  to  do  all  the  thinking  and  all  the  emotion  and  all 
the  passion.  And  she  must  not  be  too  capable.  A  woman 
so  easily  creates  her  own  little  world  of  material  things, 
which,  being  a  kind  of  garment  for  herself,  no  one  else 
can  possibly  share.  Above  all  she  must  neither  admire 
nor  expect  to  be  admired.  True  love  and  admiration  are 
not  housemates.  I  don't  think  any  one  ever  understood 
that  except  Shakespeare,  but  then  he  did  understand 
what  men  and  women  require  of  each  other.  Am  I 


254  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

right?  Can  I  worry  you,  torment  you,  exasperate  you 
into  giving  me  a  frank,  full  and  honest  answer? — Go 
on  with  your  comic  history  of  the  progress  of  Thomas 
Lawrie.  I  love  it.  But  more  I  should  love  the  true 
and  passionate  history  of  James  Lawrie.  I  would  like 
to  say  to  my  German  friends:  This  is  the  kind  of  man 
we  are  breeding  in  the  British  Isles.  You  call  it  chaos 
but  it  is  the  confusion  of  creation.  The  French  may 
theorise,  you  may  organise,  but  the  English  act.  I  may 
be  Goethe  mad,  but  I  love  you  much  more  than  Goethe." 
"I  wonder,"  said  Margaret,  as  Jamie  folded  up  the 
letter,  "what  Mary  can  find  to  say  to  you  that  she  does 
not  say  to  the  rest  of  us." — "Havers !"  said  Jamie.  "She's 
a  grand  haverer,  is  Mary.  She's  read  so  many  books." 


THE  EMPTY  HOUSE. 


AS  Jamie  said  in  a  letter  to  Mary :  "Tom  has  crystal- 
lised." When  he  wrote  /  he  knew  perfectly  what 
he  meant;  thousands  of  pounds  in  the  bank,  a  room  of 
his  own  at  Keith  Bros.  &  Stevenson,  Gladstonian  opin- 
ions, membership  of  the  Portico,  the  best  tailor  in 
Thrigsby,  a  wide  circle  of  wealthy  acquaintances,  half-a- 
dozen  houses  where  he  could  dine  well,  and  excellent 
prospects,  indeed,  an  assured  future  unmenaced  by  un- 
reasonable ambitions.  He  was  a  delight  to  his  mother 
and  she  aided  and  abetted  him  in  his  tacit  assumption 
of  the  headship  of  the  family.  He  became  dictatorial 
and  had  the  food  and  the  furniture  of  the  house  exactly 
to  his  liking.  He  condescended  to  offer  Jamie  his  advice 
in  the  matter  of  his  inheritance  of  Clibran  Hall. — "I 
should  sell,"  he  said. — "I'm  getting  quite  fond  of  my 
white  elephant,"  replied  Jamie. — "But  it  will  cost  you 
an  unwarrantable  amount  in  repairs.  You  cannot  pos- 
sibly hope  to  find  a  good  tenant.  As  a  dwelling-house 
your  only  chance  would  be  to  turn  it  into  a  brothel." — 
Tom  wore  his  rather  foolish  sardonic  smile. — "I've  no 
desire  to  oblige  you  and  your  friends,"  replied  Jamie. — 
"I  was  joking,"  said  Tom. — "You  do  it  with  an  ill  grace," 
said  Jamie. — "Seriously,"  continued  Tom  standing  in  his 
favourite  attitude  in  front  of  the  fireplace,  "I  should  sell 

255 


256  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  furniture  and  fittings,  and  hang  on  to  the  old  place 
for  a  little.  Its  time  is  not  yet  come.  In  a  year  or  so  it 
will  be  wanted  for  a  factory  site  and  then  you  should  be 
able  to  hold  out  for  your  own  terms.  I  should  not  sell 
at  once,  if  I  were  you.  There's  the  farm  to  go  between 
Clibran  and  Jewsbury's.  When  that  has  gone  you  will 
come  into  your  own." — "I'll  do  what  I  think  fit,"  replied 
Jamie,  and  he  did  nothing.  One  or  two  of  the  pictures 
he  presented  to  the  Municipal  Art  Gallery — a  Landseer 
and  a  Mulready.  The  books  he  brought  home  to  his 
study:  Andrew  must  have  bought  the  books  proper  to 
a  gentleman's  library  by  the  yard,  for  there  was  a  won- 
derfully complete  collection,  the  classics,  Heine,  Buckle, 
Macaulay,  Berkeley,  Locke,  Bishop  Butler,  Pope,  Swift, 
Richardson,  Fielding,  Smollett,  Sterne,  Scott,  Keats, 
Byron,  Martin  Tupper,  Tennyson,  and,  greatest  prize  of 
all  to  Jamie,  a  noble  edition  of  the  Faerie  Queene.  He 
would  not  have  taken  all  Tom's  thousands  for  that. 
Most  astonishing  of  all  was  a  fine  collection  of  engrav- 
ings, prints  and  etchings,  among  them  a  Diirer  and  a 
Rembrandt  which  Jamie  had  framed  and  sent  as  a  pres- 
ent to  Agnes.  As  he  sent  no  word  with  them  she  thought 
they  were  from  Tom  and  wrote  to  thank  him  for  them, 
and  Tom  no  more  thought  of  correcting  the  mistake 
than  he  would  have  corrected  a  muddle  in  business  which 
turned  to  his  advantage. 

Jamie  gave  his  mother  and  Mrs.  Leslie  and  many  other 
of  his  friends  their  choice  among  the  furniture  and  saw 
Clibran  Hall  gradually  denuded.  And  nothing  happened. 
Nobody  wanted  the  huge  ugly  house  and  he  used  it  as  a 
place  of  escape  when  his  thoughts  began  to  tease  and 
shake  him,  for  the  foolish  end  to  the  Selina  affair  had 
not  let  him  off  lightly.  He  missed  her  colour  and  through 
her  he  too  had  to  a  certain  extent  crystallised.  The  ab- 


THE  EMPTY  HOUSE  257 

surd  longings,  the  heady  idealism  of  youth  were  no 
longer  enough  for  him.  Something  of  his  nature  was 
gone  with  Selina,  and  was  hers  for  ever,  though  she 
might  not  need  it  or  even  be  aware  of  it.  Whithersoever 
his  affections  moved  it  must  be  towards  romance,  they 
must  be  creative  and  take  life  and  love  as  their  raw 
material  and  never  merely  be  absorbed  by  them.  He  was 
filled  with  vague  and  immense  desires,  which  made  his 
sister  Mary's  easy  summary  of  his  needs  and  her  exact- 
ing requirements  of  him  maddeningly  cool  and  cold.  But 
through  the  eyes  of  no  one  else  had  he  any  opportunity 
of  seeing  himself :  admiration  he  had  in  plenty  from 
both  women  and  men;  through  Hubert  he  was  always 
able  to  see  himself  in  caricature;  but  Hubert  as  much 
as  Mary  was  blind  to  the  strange  and  incomprehensible 
eager  element  in  himself  by  and  for  which,  as  he  was 
slowly  driven  to  see,  he  lived.  He  was  nearest  to  com- 
prehension of  it  when  he  was  alone  in  Clibran  Hall. 
There  he  could  realise  the  mocking  discrepancy  between 
the  old  dreams  he  had  shared  with  his  mother  and  the 
realisation  that  was  slowly  taking  place.  England  had 
been  and  still  was  to  be  a  place  dominated  by  the  Keiths. 
It  was  to  be  his  lot  in  life  to  share  and  continue  that 
domination.  He  was  to  end  his  days  in  a  house  like 
Clibran  Hall,  to  be  buried  as  Andrew  had  been,  to  have, 
as  Andrew  soon  would  have,  his  statue  in  the  Town  Hall 
Square.  He  would  sit  in  Andrew's  study  and  enjoy 
the  humour  of  it.  He  had  Clibran  Hall,  by  Andrew's 
last  sardonic  stroke,  but  empty,  crowded  in  on  all  sides 
by  the  unpleasing  manifestations  of  industrialism,  the 
ugliness  and  squalor  upon  which  it  built  its  success.  In 
the  garden  grew  foul  docks  and  smoky  nettles  with  here 
and  there  an  obstinate  garden  plant,  a  rose  or  a  holly- 
hock, that  would  not  be  denied. — How  swiftly  wild 


258  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

nature  asserted  itself:  weeds  everywhere,  and  the  neat 
gravel  overgrown  with  grass.  And  the  wild  nature  in 
man?  Would  not  that  too  take  its  revenge? — Jamie 
had  been  reading  Erasmus  Darwin  and  the  Lord  of  his 
young  religion  had  departed  out  of  his  mind  for  ever. 
He  had  been  helped  out  by  public  events.  No  God 
could  both  bless  England  and  allow  the  Crimean  War. — 
Not  that  Jamie  was  unpatriotic :  he  had  been  as  excited 
as  any  of  them,  as  uncritically  ready  to  assume  vile  bar- 
barism in  the  Russians  because  they  wished  to  take 
Constantinople  from  the  gentle  Turk  in  order  the  more 
dreadfully  to  threaten  India.  Our  James,  like  other 
good  and  true  men,  was  not  consistent  either  mentally 
or  emotionally.  So  far  as  he  took  any  interest  in  politics 
he  was  a  Disraelian ;  Tom  was  a  Gladstonian  and  indeed 
there  was  something  repulsive  about  English  Liberalism. 
It  was  so  infernally  complacent.  Better  a  little  vulgar 
swagger  than  its  super-Christian  humility. — So  Jamie 
joined  the  vulgar  swagger  and  partly  out  of  good  nature, 
partly  out  of  genuine  sensibility  to  the  new  excitement 
of  Imperialism,  joined  the  Volunteers  and  wore  a  uni- 
form on  Saturdays.  He  trimmed  his  beard  to  be  like 
Lord  Raglan's  and  began  vaguely  to  feel  that  he  was 
making  a  fool  of  himself.  This  was  quite  pleasant: 
hundreds  of  others  were  doing  it  too;  and  they  were 
doing  it  publicly.  England,  after  all,  was  an  Empire  and 
not  what  it  seemed  to  be,  a  collection  of  ugly  cities  set 
in  a  lovely  but  impoverished  country. 

It  was  generally  on  Saturdays  after  his  drill  or  march 
through  the  streets  that  Jamie  would  take  refuge  at 
Clibran  Hall,  in  his  tunic  and  shako,  generally  with  the 
jeers  of  little  boys  ringing  in  his  ears.  He  could  not  go 
home  from  the  jeering  little  boys  to  Tom's  sarcasms. 
In  the  Volunteer  movement  Tom  had  found  a  subject 


THE  EMPTY  HOUSE  259 

entirely  to  his  liking. — "Playing  at  soldiers.  Either  be 
a  soldier  and  go  and  die  of  scrofula  outside  Sevastopol, 
or  leave  it  alone.  Defend  the  country  ?  Whom  against  ? 
Napoleon  couldn't  attack  it,  and,  if  he  couldn't,  who 
could?  Napoleon  was  quite  right,  England  was  a  shop. 
Europe's  shop.  Europe  would  never  be  fool  enough  to 
wreck  it.  As  for  this  nonsense  about  Empire,  he  had  no 
patience  with  it.  Directly  people  called  themselves  an 
Empire  they  began  to  decline  and  fall.  There  was  no 
help  for  it.  When  a  nation  called  itself  an  Empire  it 
was  a  sign  that  it  had  reached  its  zenith :  it  had  lost  its 
sense  of  proportion  and  would  sooner  or  later  make  itself 
such  a  nuisance  to  the  world  that  the  world  would  not 
stand  it  any  longer." — "At  all  events,"  said  Margaret, 
"I  think  Jamie  looks  very  handsome  in  his  uniform." — 
"It  makes  me  sick,"  said  Tom,  "to  see  him  on  a  Saturday 
afternoon  slinking  out  of  the  house  dressed  up  like  a 
play-actor." — "It  has  made  a  great  difference  in  your 
health,  hasn't  it,  Jamie?"  asked  Margaret. 

It  was  to  avoid  such  scenes  as  this  that  he  escaped. 
At  first  he  had  gone  to  John's  where  Sophia  applauded 
and  admired  him,  and  John  would  be  much  more  gentle 
and  sensible.  He  had  become  very  kind,  had  John,  since 
his  lungs  had  begun  to  disappear.  He  would  say:  "I 
don't  know  where  it's  going  to  end.  We  thrashed  Boney 
without  making  any  to-do  about  it.  It  was  a  job  that 
had  to  be  done.  We  took  our  licking  in  America  in 
very  good  part;  but  I  don't  like  this  new  spirit  at  all. 
It  isn't  manly.  It  isn't  English.  It  is  dangerous,  and 
it  is  going  to  be  very  expensive.  We  can  do  the  other 
nations  very  nicely  over  the  counter.  We  don't  need  to 
threaten  them  or  shake  the  sword  at  them.  We've  got 
to  get  rich  so  as  to  have  time  for  culture,  and  as  little 
as  possible  should  we  get  rich  at  other  people's  expense. 


260  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

I'm  a  Free  Trade  man,  as  you  know,  and  I  believe  that 
if  we  give  the  others  a  good  lead  they'll  follow.  I'm 
not  in  Palmerston's  confidence  but  this  Crimean  business 
looks  to  me  like  turning  our  backs  on  our  own  tradition. 
Palmerston's  a  fool  and  a  high  and  dry  old  Tory  and 
doesn't  see  that  the  English  tradition  has  passed  out  of 
the  hands  of  his  class,  into  the  hands  of  men  with  better 
brains,  more  experience  and  a  closer  contact  with  life 
as  it  is  lived  by  the  many,  who  ultimately,  whether  you 
like  them  or  not — and  I  don't — are  the  people  who  mat- 
ter. He  has  landed  us  in  this  mess  to  assert  his  class 
and  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  he  hasn't  smashed  old 
England  as  the  leader  of  the  world,  though  she'll  go  on 
getting  richer  and  richer.  I  know,  if  I  were  a  Dutchman 
or  a  Swede  or  an  Austrian,  I  should  find  it  hard  to  believe 
in  old  England  ever  again.  We've  become  just  like  the 
rest  of  them,  you  see." — "Still,"  said  Jamie,  "it  may  be 
a  mistake,  but  I  don't  like  this  settling  down  to  the  shop, 
and  we  are  Europeans  and  if  Europe  has  to  go  through 
the  fire  we  have  to  go  through  it  too."-  -"But  we've 
done  it,"  said  John.  "We  went  through  our  fire  in  the 
Civil  War,  and  we  settled  down  to  the  rights  of  man 
long  before  the  Frenchies  began  to  screech  about  it. 
When  the  divine  right  of  kings  went  out  the  divine  rights 
of  men  came  in.  That  is  how  I  look  at  it  and  the  rest 
of  the  world  will  slowly  come  into  line.  What  is  Amer- 
ica but  the  creation  of  the  few  stubborn  Englishmen  who 
were  in  too  great  a  hurry  to  see  the  new  idea  take  shape 
in  the  old  country?'* 

There  were  many  such  talks,  and  Jamie  and  John 
became  good  friends  in  the  few  months  before  the  lat- 
ter's  departure  with  Sophia  and  their  first-born,  Angus, 
for  Australia.  When  they  were  gone  Jamie  had  no  other 
refuge  than  his  own  solitude.  He  would  return  with 


THE  EMPTY  HOUSE  261 

pipe  and  tobacco  to  Clibran  Hall,  take  off  his  tunic  and 
shako — if  it  were  Saturday — and  lay  them  on  a  chair 
on  the  other  side  of  the  fireplace  and  look  at  them. — The 
Queen's  Uniform :  and  he  would  remember  a  saying 
of  Cobbett's  to  the  effect  that  the  Queen  had  every- 
thing: her  Majesty's  Judges,  her  Majesty's  Army,  her 
Majesty's  Navy,  her  Majesty's  Government,  her  Majes- 
ty's Prisons,  while,  when  it  came  to  Debt,  that  was 
National.  Then  he  would  try  to  account  for  the  pleasure 
he  had  in  wearing  her  Majesty's  uniform,  though  he  was 
sure  he  would  never  desire  to  kill  even  the  vilest  of  her 
Majesty's  enemies.  First  of  all  there  was  the  pleasure 
of  being  one  of  many;  it  was  good  to  walk  in  a  row  of 
men  and  feel  at  the  first  glance  that  he  had  something  in 
common  with  them,  even  if  it  were  only  a  matter  of 
clothes.  In  ordinary  life,  there  were  so  many  with  whom 
he  had  nothing  in  common.  How  little  he  knew  even  of 
his  mother  and  his  brothers;  only  with  Mary  was  there 
any  real  sharing  of  mind  or  feeling.  Did  the  others 
mind?  Were  they  content  with  their  narrow  piety  and 
close  pursuit  of  their  profitable  duty  ?  Was  there  nothing 
outside  their  Puritanism  but  frivolity?  Escaping  An- 
drew, was  there  no  alternative  but  Hubert?  He  was 
dissatisfied  with  Hubert  who  had  seemed  to  despise  him 
for  suffering  so  much  over  the  loss  of  Selina,  who  had 
gone,  as  she  said,  with  Henry  Acomb  and  Mrs.  Bulloch 
and  was  swallowed  up  in  the  remote  brilliance  of  Lon- 
don.— There  were  times  when  Jamie  felt  so  desolate 
and  dissatisfied  with  the  respectable  monotony  of  his  life 
that  he  often  thought  almost  seriously  of  going  for  a 
soldier  indeed,  and  when  there  began  to  come  the  flood 
of  war  verses  his  martial  spirit  was  stirred  and  he 
wrote  verses  too  and  sent  them  up  to  the  London  papers, 
hoping  to  begin  a  career  with  them.  But  they  never 


262  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

appeared.  The  fame  of  Quintus  Flumen  was  local,  and 
indeed  London  in  those  days  was  hardly  more  aware 
of  Thrigsby  than  of  Penmaenmawr.  Money  and  abomin- 
able ideas  came  out  of  Thrigsby :  it  was  vulgar  because 
of  the  one  and  obnoxious  because  of  the  other. — His 
poems  rejected,  his  offering  to  Agnes  despised ;  Andrew's 
will  and  Donald's  behaviour  had  showed  only  too  plainly 
where  the  Lawries  stood;  there  was  nothing  for  it, 
thought  Jamie,  but  to  enlist.  Unhappily,  however,  it 
was  impossible  to  enlist  as  a  General  and  nothing  less 
would  satisfy  his  mother. — Madame  Mere!  What  did 
she  make  of  Napoleon?  Was  she  disappointed  that  her 
brilliant  second  son  had  not  fulfilled  some  secret  ambi- 
tion for  him?  Perhaps  she  had  thought  her  Napoleon 
would  make  a  nice  little  priest,  exactly  as  Margaret  had 
thought  her  eldest-born  would  make  a  good  little  mer- 
chant. 

Sometimes  he  would  write  poems,  not  of  the  patriotic 
kind ;  verses  beginning  "Selina  has  my  heart,"  but  they 
were  all  false  and  he  knew  them  to  be  so  and  tore  them 
up.  Other  times  he  would  work,  writing  either  his 
dramatic  criticism  or  one  of  a  series  of  articles  he  had 
begun  for  the  new  Thrigsby  Weekly  Post  on  Banks  and 
Bankers.  Again  he  would  wander  through  the  great 
empty  house,  from  room  to  room,  imagining  the  life  that 
had  been  in  them.  Andrew  had  bought  it,  he  knew,  on 
the  occasion  of  his  marriage.  It  must  have  seemed  the 
solid  triumph  of  his  life.  No  one,  not  even  much  richer 
men,  had  such  houses.  No  one  had  such  huge,  such 
massive  furniture  as  had  once  filled  it.  No  one  slept  in 
such  beds  as  that  leviathan  four-poster  which  had  domin- 
ated and  obscured  the  nuptial  chamber.  The  mockery  of 
that  bed !  A  rack  on  which  a  miserable  woman  had  been 
tortured!  And  with  that  tragedy  at  the  heart  of  its  life 


THE  EMPTY  HOUSE  263 

what  splendour  and  ostentation,  what  feasts,  what  a 
show  of  princely  hospitality  there  must  have  been.  And 
suppose,  thought  Jamie,  suppose  there  had  been  no  Hu- 
bert, no  crisis,  no  climax :  suppose  Andrew's  life  had  been 
undisturbed,  suppose  he  and  Elisabeth  had  had  children : 
would  the  tragedy  have  been  any  less  ?  Would  the  house 
have  been  less  grim  and  empty? — Andrew  was  still  very 
much  alive :  he  was  still  in  Jamie's  way,  though  the  fear 
of  him  was  gone.  It  was  wonderful  how  its  going  made 
thought  easier  and  sweeter  the  contemplation  of  An- 
drew's tragedy.  Torment  can  be  sweet  if  it  be  shot,  how- 
ever dimly,  with  the  light  of  understanding,  and  here 
there  was  at  least  the  will  to  understand,  and,  finally, 
the  passionate  desire.  Jamie  found  himself  living  in 
that  old  story.  His  mother  had  wished  him  to  live  by 
and  from  Andrew  Keith,  to  occupy  that  corner  of  the 
world  which  Andrew  had  prepared.  He  had  obliged 
her  more  thoroughly  than  she  could  possibly  imagine. 
He  must  know  what  that  world  was  like  before  he  could 
live  in  it.  Neither  Andrew  nor  Margaret  could  or  would 
give  him  any  clue  to  it.  He  must  find  his  own.  What 
had  they  done  to  make  entrance  so  difficult?  Was  the 
gulf  between  the  generations  impassable?  Jamie  often 
thought  sadly  of  his  mother's  face,  how  little  meaning 
its  expressions  could  convey  to  him,  how  very  little  he 
knew  of  the  life  behind  it,  that  had  made  it,  and  how 
easy  it  was  to  fill  the  void  of  his  ignorance  with  charm- 
ing fantasy.  She  was  not  such  a  mother  as  Mrs.  Leslie 
was  to  her  children,  but  how  delightful  it  would  have 
been  to  pretend  that  she  was,  and  yet  how  disgusting  too ! 
For  Margaret  was  much  finer  than  that,  stronger, 
prouder,  bolder,  hugging  the  griefs  her  children  brought 
her  and  never  acquiescing  in  their  misdeeds.  Margaret 
was  Biblical ;  Mrs.  Leslie  Dickensian.  There  was  a  weak- 


264  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

ening  in  the  attempt  to  make  a  philosophy  of  palliation. 
Jamie  needed  the  Biblical  idea  of  his  mother,  her  own 
idea  of  herself,  for  his  task  of  unravelling  the  Andrew 
story. — It  became  his  dearest  joy.  For  months  together 
he  needed  no  other  life.  It  came  very  near  to  Mary's 
description  of  the  philosophic  life,  but  it  was  not  disin- 
terested. He  had  accepted  Andrew's  world  and  accord- 
ing to  his  nature  had  to  make  the  best  of  it.  He  envied 
Tom,  who  was  so  constituted  that  he  could  take  the 
money  and  the  success  and  leave  the  rest.  He  envied 
John  who  could  reject  the  whole  creation.  Yet  he  would 
have  changed  with  neither.  This  employment  of  his 
was  its  own  reward.  It  was  as  near  to  art,  he  began 
vaguely  to  perceive,  as  he  would  ever  go.  He  often 
laughed  to  himself  as  he  thought  that  he  was  passing 
through  the  crisis  of  his  life;  the  mental  crisis  coinciding 
with  the  physical  entrance  into  maturity.  What  luck, 
he  thought,  that  he  was  not  married!  All  that  could 
come  later,  when  he  had  emerged  triumphant  over  the 
secret  of  the  world  he  had  inherited:  the  moral  issue 
settled. — Ah !  the  money  and  the  success  would  be  worth 
while  then.  He  would  know  what  to  do  with  them. 
Otherwise  they  were  trash  and  he  would  be  overwhelmed 
by  them  as  Andrew  had  been  and  Tom  bade  fair  to  be. 
And,  in  the  moments  when  he  was  sure  of  his  triumph, 
he  would  feel  sorry  for  Tom. 

One  night  as  he  returned  from  prowling  through  the 
house  to  the  study  he  sat  at  Andrew's  desk  and  began 
to  work.  His  dramatic  criticisms  had  lately  become 
rather  intellectual  and  academic  and  he  took  scanty  notice 
of  the  actors.  Currie  Bigge  had  complained : — "I  don't 
want  you  to  be  vulgar,  but  you  must  be  readable." — He 
tried  to  make  himself  readable  and  imitated  Lamb's  man- 
ner, caught  from  him  some  of  his  enthusiasm  for  acting 


THE  EMPTY  HOUSE  265 

as  acting  without  reference  to  the  general  effect  of  the 
play.  Even  so  it  was  heavy  work  and  he  was  often 
stopped  for  want  of  a  word.  Looking  round  the  desk, 
he  found  himself  wondering  whether  it  had  not  a  secret 
drawer  and  he  spent  over  an  hour  searching.  At  last 
in  one  of  the  pigeon-holes  he  found  a  crack,  inserted  his 
fingernail  and  pressed  a  spring.  Down  fell  an  inlaid 
panel  to  disclose  an  aperture  full  of  papers  and  books. 
Currie  Bigge  had  to  do  without  his  dramatic  criticism 
that  week.  There  were  letters,  notes,  diaries,  cuttings 
from  newspapers,  reports  of  public  utterances,  all  the 
documents  which  could  be  a  source  of  pride  to  old  An- 
drew. Jamie  found  them  of  no  great  interest  until  he 
came  to  the  diaries,  a  series  covering  a  period  of  over 
fifty  years,  though  pages  and  pages  were  filled  with  noth- 
ing more  than  entries  like :  "Better  weather.  Napoleon 
dead  and  a  good  job  too."  Or,  "Gave  orders  for  new 
boiler;  engineer  says  two  not  enough.  Rubbish.  Must 
see  about  coal  supply.  Prince  Consort  turning  out  bet- 
ter than  I  expected,"  or  "Afraid  the  railway  business  is 
being  overdone.  After  all,  there  is  a  limit  and  water  will 
remain  best  for  heavy  goods.  Must  take  to  hunting. 
Kennedy  is  doing  it  and  goes  down  to  his  warehouse  in 
riding-boots  and  breeches." — The  hunting  led  to  Elisa- 
beth, an  Adlington,  of  an  old  family  of  squires  upon 
whose  estate  coal  had  been  discovered.  There  was  an 
entry:  "England's  wealth  (i)  agriculture,  (2)  coal,  (3) 
cotton,  (i)  and  (2)  Adlington:  (3)  A.  K.  Elisabeth 
or  Agatha?  Agatha  is  the  more  comely,  but  Elisabeth 
is  the  more  sensible.  Agatha  would  give  herself  airs. 
She  would  insist  on  the  superiority  of  coal  and  birth 
over  cotton  and  brains.  She  is  not  beautiful  enough  to 
justify  the  sacrifice.  I  want  a  wife  that  Thrigsby  will 
look  up  to,  but  not  one  who  will  look  down  on  Thrigsby. 


266  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

I  should  say  E.  would  be  the  better  breeder." — Not  much 
romance  about  old  Andrew,  and  where  was  his  wonder- 
ful trick  of  self-deception?  Perhaps  that  developed  later. 
He  had  a  certain  private  humour  that  reminded  Jamie 
of  Tom.  There  were  many  pages  that  Tom  might  have 
written.  The  courtship  was  fully  recorded: — "Squire 
Adlington  not  averse.  Financial  position  quite  up  to  the 
mark. — Proposed  and  honourably  refused — Mr.  Keith, 
I  am  fully  aware  of  the  honour  you  do  me — O !  but  she 
has  the  daintiest  ankle! — Shall  wait  six  weeks  and  try 
again.  Good  weather,  good  scent,  good  run.  I  can't 
think  what  possesses  that  fellow  Cobden,  who  has  made 
himself  a  good  position  and  a  fair  business,  to  go  run- 
ning about  the  country.  He'll  ruin  it  as  well  as  himself 
if  he  does  not  take  care.  Fortunately  the  people  will 
never  listen  to  a  demagogue  who  has  taken  care  to  fill 
his  own  pockets  first.  There  always  will  be  Haves  and 
Have-nots  and  they  are  as  different  as  the  sexes.  I  am 
a  Have,  Shiel  is  a  Have-not,  and  we  shall  never  under- 
stand each  other.  I  am  a  Have,  Madame  Elisabeth,  and 
I  mean  to  have  you." — Jamie  hurried  on  to  the  next 
proposal : — "Refused,  but  argued.  Love  not  out  of  the 
question,  as  E.  seems  to  have  feared.  Wives  love  their 
husbands,  because  they  are  wived  by  them.  Could  not 
of  course  explain  this,  but  was  as  tender  as  it  is  in  my 
nature  to  be.  Perfectly  sound  man,  I  explained,  sound 
in  wind,  limb  and  religion.  Birth  Scots,  and  therefore, 
when  not  illegitimate,  good  enough.  Keiths  at  Naseby. 
Where  were  the  Adlingtons  then  ?  I  asked  and  she  with 
her  dearest  smile  replied:  'At  Adlington.' — I  find  she 
likes  to  laugh.  Dull  life  at  Adlington,  I  fancy.  Father 
drinks.  No  wonder,  if  the  family  has  been  there  two 
hundred  years  and  more.  And  to  think  that  Thrigsby 
is  only  fourteen  miles  away !" — "She  reads  Jane  Austen, 


THE  EMPTY  HOUSE  267 

whom  I  cannot  stomach.  Fancy  that  mild  babble  being 
written  while  all  Europe  was  in  a  blaze.  I  suppose  she 
would  wish  me  to  be  like  Captain  Wentworth.  Have  told 
the  old  father  and  left  it  to  him  to  bring  her  to  reason." 
— "Adlington  came  to  see  me  to-day  to  suggest  Agatha. 
I  insist  on  Elisabeth.  Let  him  bring  her  to  town  to  see 
what  money  can  do  there." — In  the  end  he  wore  down 
Elisabeth's  resistance.  There  were  no  entries  in  the 
diary  for  some  weeks  until  at  last  came:  "Married. 
Good.  Liverpool,  I  can  see,  is  going  to  be  an  infernal 
nuisance.  Shall  give  up  hunting.  It  is  expensive  and 
takes  up  too  much  time.  Trouble  in  Ireland.  There  is 
always  trouble  in  Ireland,  and  we  have  too  many  Irish 
here." — After  that  there  was  no  mention  of  Elisabeth  ex- 
cept three  years  later: — "E.  has  had  a  miscarriage! 
Damn  it!" 

For  years  then  the  diaries  rambled  on,  an  odd  com- 
mentary on  the  period,  remarkable  more  for  what  it 
omitted  than  for  what  it  mentioned.  Tremendous  events 
were  only  remarked  on  in  so  far  as  they  affected  the 
buying  and  selling  of  cotton.  The  only  indication  of 
the  growing  tragedy  was  the  increasing  bitterness  of 
the  sardonic  note  in  the  writer's  humour.  He  was  often 
brilliant,  sometimes  coarse  and  the  jests  made  Jamie 
shout  with  laughter  as  he  sat  in  the  empty  house  opposite 
his  tunic  and  shako.  Suddenly  almost  the  whole  diary 
was  occupied  with  the  entry  of  one  day :  "She  came  to 
me  this  morning  and  asked  me  to  stay  as  she  had  some- 
thing important  to  say  to  me.  I  told  her  bed  was  the 
place  for  that.  In  a  very  low  voice  she  said  she  had 
never  admired  me.  She  informed  me  that  I  was  vulgar, 
hard,  insensitive,  grasping,  and  that  the  love  I  had  offered 
her  was  an  insult  to  a  woman.  I  refused  to  listen  to 
more  and  left  her  to  recover  herself.  I  am  what  I  am, 


268  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

like  Dean  Swift.  All  the  same  she  had  spoiled  my  appe- 
tite either  for  work  or  for  my  victuals.  When  I  returned 
home  I  found  a  letter  to  say  that  she  had  gone  with  her 
lover,  Hubert,  of  all  people;  Hubert,  the  petticoat-hunter, 
Hubert,  the  effeminate  dandy,  Hubert,  whom  I  used  to 
tip  when  he  went  back  to  school !  The  woman's  a  whore 
and  has  dishonoured  me.  My  God !  does  she  know  what 
she  has  done  ?  Her  own  family :  they  won't  like  having 
bred  a  whore.  I  am  almost  afraid  of  my  own  rage.  I 
gave  her  everything  she  wanted.  She  had  her  own  car- 
riage. Fool  that  I  am!  I  knew  what  was  going  on, 
but  would  never  admit  it  to  myself.  I  shall  be  laughed 
at.  Laugh  then!  Go  on,  laugh!  I'll  laugh  at  myself 
first!  Now  you  can't  hurt  me.  I'm  laughing.  D'ye 
think  I  set  much  store  by  this  marriage?  It  was  barren." 
— Jamie  could  hardly  read  through  his  excitement.  O! 
the  strong  obstinate  vanity  of  the  man !  He  would  not 
admit  either  his  own  fault  or  his  own  grief.  The  woman 
was  a  whore,  she  had  injured  Hubert  far  more  than  she 
had  hurt  him.  Thrigsby  might  snigger  to  itself,  but 
openly  it  would  say:  "Poor  Keith!  He  doted  on  that 
wife  of  his."  They  would  remember,  as  he  was  doing, 
her  faults  and  forget  her  virtues,  her  charm,  her  kind- 
ness, the  gracious  hospitality  they  had  received  at  her 
hands.  Her  hospitality  ?  He  paid  for  it. — That  was  the 
final  argument  behind  which,  sore  and  bewildered,  An- 
drew took  refuge.  Jamie  could  feel  the  soreness  and 
the  bewilderment  and  respond,  but  what  infuriated  him 
was  that  he  was  given  no  clue  to  Elisabeth's  mind  and 
feelings,  while  Hubert  was  for  Andrew  non-existent. 
The  episode  spoiled  his  appetite,  but  when  he  realised  that 
Thrigsby  would  take  his  view  of  the  affair  he  recovered 
himself  and  set  about  making  more  money  and  creating 


THE  EMPTY  HOUSE  269 

for  himself  a  fine  official  position  so  that  Elisabeth  should 
feel  what  she  had  missed. 

It  amused  Jamie  to  recollect  that  when  Selina  had 
jilted  him  his  first  impulse  had  been  to  dismiss  her 
angrily  as  worthless,  and  he  wondered  if  he  would  have 
felt  the  same  if  he  had  been  married  to  Selina.  And 
he  tried  to  work  out  the  tragedy  of  Andrew  with  the 
aid  of  his  own  experience :  not  very  successfully  until 
he  began  painfully  to  think  that  Selina  might  have  left 
him  for  the  same  reason  which  had  led  Elisabeth  to  aban- 
don her  husband.  He  could  see  in  himself  some  of  the 
same  blind  humourless  egoism,  though  it  had  not  yet 
been  so  fatal,  but  he  did  not  believe  that  Selina  could 
have  perceived  it  in  him  and  suffered  from  it.  No:  he 
decided — she  had  left  him  for  a  bird  of  her  own  feather. 
But  might  not  that  have  been  the  case  with  Elisabeth? 
It  is  absurd  to  ascribe  superhuman  insight  to  the  female. 
What  kind  of  woman  would  attract  and  bind  Hubert? 
And  where  would  she  touch  him?  In  his  pity  and 
chivalry,  thought  Jamie,  feeling  that  he  was  coming 
near  the  heart  of  the  mystery.  Of  course,  passion  might 
very  easily  have  little  to  do  with  it,  and  there  would 
lie  its  pity,  there  the  fascination  of  the  imbroglio  to 
Hubert.  Jamie  felt  sick  at  heart:  Andrew  cold  as  ice; 
Hubert  cold  as  stone;  the  woman  between  them.  Ah! 
that  was  the  sting  of  it,  that  the  cause  of  the  obsession. 
A  fine  thrilling  story  and  the  end  of  it  was  Andrew 
making  money,  Hubert  making  money,  and  the  woman 
dead.  There  was  no  possibility  anywhere  of  life  for 
her.  Hubert  seemed  as  detestable  as  Andrew. 

Jamie  whistled  "The  Russians  shall  not  get  to  Con- 
stantinople" as  he  lay  back  and  thought  it  over. — "So 
this,"  he  thought,  "is  what  lay  beyond  the  Blue  Moun- 
tains; this  is  what  they  have  made  of  life  and  it  doesn't 


270  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

look  as  if  we  were  going  to  make  it  much  better.  John 
with  his  lungs  half  gone:  Tom  turning  into  one  huge 
trouser-pocket  full  of  money:  myself  running  after 
coloured  gas-light  dreams:  mother  eating  her  heart  out 
because  the  Lawries  aren't  as  important  as  the  Keiths: 
and  Tibby — oh !  well,  there's  always  Tibby." — In  a  shift- 
ing, uneasy  and  changing  world,  that  most  inconsider- 
ately refused  to  allow  itself  to  be  understood,  he  clung 
to  Tibby  as  a  comprehensible  reality,  though  he  was  as 
ignorant  of  the  detail  of  her  life  as  of  anyone's. — "Good 
God!"  he  said  to  himself,  "I  don't  know  what  is  going 
on  in  my  own  life  and  if  that  knowledge  is  impossible 
how  can  I  expect  to  have  any  other?" 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

FANNY  SHAW 


'  I  AHE  Saturday  soldiers  might  be  jeered  at  by  little 
•••  boys  as  they  marched  on  parade  through  the  streets 
with  the  Colonel  on  horseback  and  a  band  with  a  real 
drum-major  going  before.  The  Colonel  of  the  3rd 
V.B.T.R.  was  a  wealthy  man  and  liked  everything  well 
done.  Wealthy  too  were  many  of  the  rank  and  file  and 
if  their  regiment  were  not  going  to  have  a  chance  of 
proving  its  mettle  in  the  war,  it  should  at  least  make  a 
show  in  the  peaceful  city  of  Thrigsby,  and  give  the  people 
something  for  the  money  the  war  was  costing  and  remind 
them  that  the  world  was  not  subdued  by  Waterloo.  There 
were  public  functions  too.  The  Volunteers  lined  the 
streets  when  an  august  personage  visited  Thrigsby,  and 
was  received  by  the  Mayor,  the  Town  Clerk,  the  Re- 
corder, and  the  City  Treasurer.  The  Volunteers  had  a 
Sunday  set  apart  for  them  in  the  Cathedral;  a  Sunday 
in  May,  and  then,  when  the  greengrocers'  shops  were 
gay  with  hyacinths  and  daffodils  and  tulips  and  oranges 
and  lemons,  cauliflowers  and  turnip-tops,  then  the  five 
thousand  volunteers  blossomed  like  flowers  and,  if  it  did 
not  rain,  had  a  grand  parade  through  the  streets  on  Sat- 
urday, and  assembled  on  Sunday  morning  outside  the 
Cathedral  under  the  Cromwell  statue,  while  the  massed 
bands  played  God  Save  the  Queen  and  the  Old  Hun- 

271 


272  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

drodth.  In  August  they  went  into  camp  and  learned  the 
stern  art  of  war. 

Jamie  was  very  soon  a  sergeant  and  was  offered  a 
commission  which,  however,  he  refused.  He  never  liked 
the  rich  young  men  of  Thrigsby  and  preferred  the  society 
of  the  clerks,  warehousemen  and  artisans  who  filled  the 
ranks  and  were  more  serious  and  dutiful  in  their  devo- 
tion to  the  Empire  on  which  the  sun  never  sets.  The 
3rd  V.B.T.R.  took  a  pride  in  itself  and  on  its  field  days 
behaved  as  though  there  really  were  Russians  hiding  in 
the  ditches  and  behind  the  hedges  of  Claypit  Fields, 
whither  they  marched  without  their  band  and  headed  by 
sappers  armed  with  axes  and  shovels,  and  followed  by 
an  ambulance.  Then  the  Colonel  would  ride  behind  and 
the  Adjutant  also  would  be  on  horseback  and  together 
they  would  conduct  operations,  which  always  ended  in 
the  storming  either  of  the  dismantled  brick-fields  or  of 
the  little  wood  at  the  end  of  the  fields  beyond  which  lie 
the  railway  and  the  village  of  Marrowfield  that  Thrigsby 
had  caught  in  its  drifting  net  of  streets.  In  the  wood  in 
springtime  were  primroses,  violets,  sorrel  and  bluebells. 
And  there  was  a  little  pond  wherein  were  Jack-sharp 
and  tadpoles  and  newts. 

On  a  day  in  spring  preparatory  to  the  storming  of  the 
wood  Jamie  was  sent  forward  to  reconnoitre  for  the 
enemy.  He  crept  up,  taking  advantage  of  every  piece 
of  cover,  crawled  through  not  over  the  fence,  up  the  hill 
and  over  the  brow  to  find  two  wide  blue  eyes  staring 
up  at  him  out  of  a  pale  face.  There  was  fear  in  them 
until  he  grinned.  The  child  looked  so  charming  there 
in  the  midst  of  a  pool  of  bluebells.  She  had  a  great 
bunch  of  them  in  her  lap  and  had  threaded  a  long  neck- 
lace of  others  which  hung  over  her  shoulders  and  shone 
in  her  ruddy  mane  of  hair. — "How  pretty  they  are!" 


FANNY  SHAW  273 


said  Jamie,  forgetting  all  about  his  regiment. — "Yes.  I 
brought  my  little  brother  to  catch  Jack-sharps.  You  can 
catch  them  nearer  home  than  this  but  there  aren't  any 
bluebells  there.  I  thought  at  first  you  were  a  parkie."- 
"No.  I'm  a  soldier — sometimes." — "Are  the  Russians 
going  to  win?" — "I  think  not."  Jamie  had  taken  a  seat 
by  her  side.  She  went  on  picking  the  blue  flowers,  their 
juice  staining  her  thin  little  red  fingers.  "I  think  not," 
he  said.  "They  can't  beat  the  English  and  the  French." 
— "The  English  have  never  been  beaten,  have  they?" — 
"They  don't  know  it  when  they  have  been,"  said  he,  com- 
promising. "What's  your  name?" — "Fanny  Shaw." — 
"Where  do  you  live?" — "69  Greenhill  Lane,  Summer- 
heys."— "That's  a  long  way  from  here."— "Yes.  But  I 
only  come  once  a  year  when  the  bluebells  are  out.  There 
aren't  many  know  of  this  wood." — "I  didn't  know  it  had 
bluebells  and  dear  little  girls  growing  in  it." — She  said 
solemnly:  "I  do  pretend  sometimes  that  I  grew  in  it, 
but  of  course  I  didn't." — "You  should  tie  up  your  hair 
with  bluebells ;  then  you  would  really  feel  like  it." — The 
child,  still  solemn,  adopted  the  suggestion  and  Jamie  as- 
sisted her.  He  was  interrupted  in  this  employment  by 
a  hullabaloo  from  the  corner  of  the  wood  and  leaping 
to  his  feet  he  saw  that  the  small  boy,  Fanny's  brother, 
had  fallen  into  the  pond  and  was  caught  in  its  oozy  bot- 
tom. Down  he  rushed,  pulled  the  boy  out,  brought  him 
back  to  his  sister  and  was  wiping  him  down  when  he 
heard  the  thud  of  horses'  hoofs  and  found  his  Colonel 
standing  above  him.  He  had  still  forgotten  all  about  his 
regiment,  did  not  remember  to  rise  to  the  salute,  and 
went  on  wiping  the  muddy  boy  and  pacifying  the  girl's 
fears. — "Sergeant  Lawrie!"  roared  the  Colonel.  "Ser- 
geant Lawrie!  Damn  it,  sir,  we've  been  waiting  over 
half-an-hour  for  you  to  return  and  report.  You've 


274  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

spoiled  the  attack,  sir,  betrayed  us  to  the  enemy,  an- 
nihilated the  whole  regiment." — "On  the  contrary,  sir," 
said  Jamie  beginning  to  enjoy  the  situation,  "I  have 
occupied  the  position  single-handed." — "Confound  your 
impudence,"  shouted  the  Colonel.  "I  sent  you  here  as  a 
scout,  not  as  a  nursemaid." — The  boy  began  to  cry  and 
Fanny  taking  him  by  the  hand  hurried  away,  trampling, 
in  her  alarm,  the  bluebells  underfoot.  Jamie  turned  to 
watch  her  go.  It  seemed  such  a  shame  to  him  to  turn 
the  child  out  of  the  wood. — "  'Tention !"  shouted  the 
Colonel.  The  Adjutant  and  some  of  the  soldiers  came 
up.  The  Colonel  appealed  to  the  Adjutant:  "Can  I 
place  this  man  under  arrest?  He  has  been  infernally 
insolent."  The  Adjutant  scratched  his  chin:  "I  don't 
know,  sir.  It  isn't  as  if  we  were  Regulars.  I  think  you 
can  tell  him  to  consider  himself  under  arrest."  The  other 
men  grinned.  The  Colonel  barked  at  Jamie :  "Consider 
yourself  under  arrest."  Jamie  saluted  and  went  off  to 
find  his  squadron.  They  were  in  a  ditch  eating  sand- 
wiches. 

The  attack  was  continued  and  carried  through  success- 
fully, and  not  a  bluebell  in  the  wood  was  left  standing. 

Three  days  later  Jamie  received  a  notice  to  attend  a 
court-martial  at  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  He  was 
unable  to  attend  for  he  was  very  busy  at  the  bank,  but 
the  Colonel  was  not  to  be  balked  of  his  revenge.  The 
regiment  was  paraded  in  its  drill  hall,  and  Sergeant  Law- 
rie  had  the  stripes  removed  from  his  arm  and  was  de- 
graded to  the  ranks.  He  paid  the  fine  prescribed  for 
resignation  with  its  breach  of  the  oath  to  save  the 
Queen's  Majesty  and  the  3rd  V.B.T.R.  knew  him  no 
more.  The  Colonel  of  that  famous  regiment  was  Mr. 
Enoch  Moon,  butter  merchant,  City  Councillor,  Justice  of 
the  Peace  and  father  of  one  Joseph  Moon,  who  was  in 


FANNY  SHAW  275 


Cateaton's  Bank,  a  year  or  two  junior  to  Jamie,  who, 
not  liking  his  looks,  had  always  ignored  him  and  hardly 
knew  he  existed  until  soon  after  the  event  just  recorded. 
Cateaton's  had  opened  a  new  branch  in  Tib  Street  to 
catch  the  coal  trade,  for  Cateaton's,  i.e.,  the  cherubic 
Rigby  Blair,  was  fully  alive  to  the  change  going  on  in 
Thrigsby  and  knew  that  it  could  no  longer  expect  its 
prestige  alone  to  compel  extension  of  business  but  must 
be  aided  with  an  effort  to  create  it.  The  new  branch 
was  opened  and  Jamie  was  offered  the  managership  of 
it,  but  he  refused,  partly  because  he  was  afraid  of  the 
responsibility,  partly  because  he  thought  it  more  to  his 
interest  to  stay  in  the  head  office.  He  was  rather  anxious 
about  the  turn  things  were  taking  and  thought  he  could 
watch  them  better  where  he  was.  The  position  in  Tib 
Street  was  offered  to  and  accepted  by  Mr.  Joseph  Moon, 
who  found  when  he  was  installed  that  his  only  approach 
in  the  ordinary  way  of  business  to  Mr.  Blair  lay  through 
Jamie.  He  made  himself  amiable,  but  the  more  polite 
he  was  the  more  did  Jamie  detest  him.  The  fellow  had 
a  skin  like  a  buffalo's  and  when  he  got  married  invited 
Jamie  to  his  wedding,  where  Mr.  Enoch  Moon  fussily 
and  pompously  regretted  the  loss  to  his  regiment. — "No 
one,"  he  said,  "could  be  more  sorry  than  I,  but  discipline 
is  discipline,  and  one  can't  allow  a  subordinate  to  ex- 
plain, can  one?  I  like  discipline  in  my  business  and  I 
wish  there  were  more  of  it.  A  hive  of  industry,  you 
know,  Mr.  Lawrie.  Bees  have  their  discipline." — "Yes," 
replied  Jamie,  "they  teach  the  act  of  order  to  a  peopled 
kingdom." — "Shakespeare,  you  know,  father,"  said  Jo- 
seph, "Mr.  Lawrie  is  Quintus  Flumen." — "Well,  sir, 
well,"  puffed  Mr.  Enoch.  "You  were  a  fine  soldier,  and 
the  Queen  will  miss  you  if  the  hour  should  ever  come." — 
"I  should  like  to  explain,"  said  Jamie,  "now  that  I  am 


276  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

no  longer  a  subordinate,  that  I  had  saved  the  boy  from 
drowning.  Had  it  been  a  real  battle  no  doubt  I  should 
have  let  him  drown,  but  as  it  was  I  thought  it  better 
to  use  my  discretion." — "Well,  sir,  well,"  replied  Mr. 
Enoch.  "I  wish  you'd  said  so  before.  Just  a  note  would 
have  put  the  whole  affair  straight." — "I  hardly  thought  it 
worth  mentioning.  The  court-martial  was  quite  excit- 
ing, wasn't  it  ?"  Jamie  turned  to  greet  an  acquaintance, 
and  Mr.  Enoch  whose  skin  was  not  so  thick  as  Joseph's 
was  left  fuming.  The  fellow  might  have  spread  his 
version  of  the  affair  and  then  he  would  look  a  fool,  by 
Jove  he  would. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Jamie  had  given  no  further  thought 
to  the  matter.  He  had  been  made  happy  with  dreams 
rising  out  of  the  vision  of  the  child  in  the  bluebell  wood 
and  he  had  sought  her  out  in  Greenhill  Lane.  Her  father 
was  a  packer  and  they  lived  in  one  of  fourteen  stucco 
houses  which  had  once  been  genteel  but  were  now  sunk 
to  being  inhabited  by  Mr.  Shaw  and  his  kind,  whose 
wives  let  rooms  to  lodgers,  the  general  expedient  for 
solving  the  problem  of  having  money  for  both  drink 
and  the  rent  on  Saturdays.  Neither  hill  nor  green  were 
in  the  lane  which  led  in  its  windings  from  a  brewery 
to  a  public-house,  or  if  you  were  walking  the  other  way 
from  the  public-house  to  the  brewery.  But  when  Jamie 
walked  either  way  with  Fanny  he  felt  that  it  led  to 
paradise.  The  child  loved  him  and  was  entirely  happy 
with  him ;  he  loved  her  but  with  her  he  was  not  altogether 
happy,  for  he  felt,  as  she  did  not,  the  misery  of  her 
surroundings.  Her  father  was  a  coarse  jovial  man  who 
had  married  young  and  worked  regularly  because  his 
wife  bore  him  a  child  every  eighteen  months.  Mrs. 
Shaw  was  a  thin  pale  woman,  untidy,  heedless,  romantic, 
absorbed  like  an  animal  in  her  baby.  As  soon  as  each 


FANNY  SHAW  277 


child  could  talk  and  walk  and  hold  food  in  its  hands  she 
had  no  more  interest  in  it,  for  there  was  another  one 
coming;  but  frail  as  she  looked,  she  did  her  own  baking 
and  washing  once  a  week,  and  she  looked  after  the 
lodger,  because,  if  she  did  not,  both  ends  would  not  meet 
on  Saturday  and  she  would  be  forced  to  run  through 
her  husband's  pockets  and  have  him,  as  likely  as  not, 
refusing  to  come  home  on  Saturdays. 

Fanny  was  nurse,  peace-maker,  cook,  charwoman  and 
did  anything  and  everything  except  clean  the  steps. 
A.  There  she  d^ew  the  line.  There  were  professional  step- 
cleaners,  girls  who  were  too  independent  to  work  in  the 
factories  or  had  quarrelled  with  their  parents,  or  got  into 
trouble,  and  went  from  house  to  house  in  the  unservanted 
region  of  Thrigsby  and  offered  to  clean  the  steps  for 
twopence.  Mrs.  Shaw,  who  recognised  that  her  daugh- 
ter's pride  was  at  stake,  would  always  have  twopence  to 
spare. 

The  most  astonishing  thing  about  Fanny  was  her 
cleanliness.  She  could  not  manage  to  keep  the  house 
clean  with  the  children  and  her  mother  always  making  a 
litter  in  it,  but  her  clothes  were  spotless,  her  red  hair 
shone,  her  white  skin  was  never  grimy.  Her  mother 
used  to  tease  her  about  it  and  her  father  used  to  say: 
"It's  a  gift.  That's  what  it  is.  It's  a  gift."  She  was  a 
great  joke  to  both  of  them.  "Old-fashioned"  they  called 
her  and  when  she  came  home  with  a  story  of  how  she 
had  seen  a  battle  and  one  of  the  soldiers  had  been  taken 
away  and  shot,  they  told  her  that  the  war  was  in  Russia 
and  over  long  ago  and  they  said  to  each  other  that  she 
must  have  heard  the  neighbours  talking.  It  was  one  of 
her  "fancies."  As  they  never  believed  what  she  said 
she  very  rarely  told  them  the  truth  and  had  suppressed 
the  facts  about  her  brother  falling  into  the  pond,  for 


278  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

she  was  afraid  that  she  would  be  forbidden  ever  to  go 
to  the  bluebell  wood  again. 

She  did  not  recognise  Jamie  out  of  his  uniform  when 
he  accosted  her  in  the  street.  And  when  he  told  her  who 
he  was  and  asked  her  to  take  him  home  to  see  her  mother 
she  was  frightened  lest  he  should  let  the  cat  out  of  the 
bag.  However  she  was  soon  at  her  ease  with  him  and 
asked  him  not  to  say  a  word  about  the  bluebell  wood, 
because  "they"  knew  nothing  of  it.  "They"  were  used 
to  Fanny's  acquaintances,  for  she  was  a  child  who  was 
often  accosted  in  the  street  and  painters  had  asked  her 
to  sit  for  them.  Her  father  said  he  had  often  seen  Mr. 
Lawrie  at  the  theatre  where  he  had  a  friend  who  played 
the  cornet  in  the  orchestra.  Feeling  that  something  good 
might  come  of  the  distinguished-looking  gentleman,  they 
allowed  the  friendship  and  once  a  week  at  least  Jamie 
had  Fanny  to  himself.  He  taught  her  to  read  and  write. 
She  could  sing  prettily  and  he  got  Mr.  Wilcox  to  teach 
her  elocution  and  gesture,  for  he  was  anxious  for  her  to 
leave  the  life  in  which  she  had  been  brought  up  and 
could  think  of  no  better  career  than  the  stage.  At  first 
her  mother  would  not  hear  of  it  but  after  a  year  of 
coaxing  and  under  the  pressure  of  weeks  of  hardship 
during  an  illness  of  her  husband's  she  consented,  and 
Fanny  made  her  first  appearance  as  Mustardseed  in  the 
Midsummer-Night's  Dream. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

TOM  AND  AGNES 


THE  performance  of  the  Midsummer-Night's  Dream 
was  one  of  the  most  successful  in  the  repertory  of 
the  stock  company,  and  Jamie  delighted  in  it,  especially 
in  Mr.  Wilcox  as  Bottom  and  Mr.  J.  Coates  as  Oberon. 
Mr.  Coates  had  a  tenor  voice  and  sang  "I  know  a  bank 
whereon  the  wild  thyme  blows,"  so  that  the  audience 
gasped  with  pleasure  and  astonishment.  Of  his  singing 
Jamie  wrote :  "He  roars  like  an  organ.  Never  was  the 
theatre  so  full  of  sound.  He  soars  so  upon  his  voice 
that  it  seems  he  can  never  come  down  again.  Come 
down  again,  however,  he  does,  and  the  play  goes  on; 
and  what  a  play,  and  what  an  England  it  must  have  been 
that  produced  it!" — He  used  often  to  take  Fanny  home 
at  night  and  it  was  very  grim  to  go  from  Shakespeare's 
Warwickshire  to  the  squalor  which  was  fast  descending 
upon  Thrigsby.  He  could  feel  it  closing  in  upon  him- 
self:  no  one  else  seemed  to  mind.  Tom  had  things  all 
his  own  way  at  Keiths'  now  and  was  satisfied :  and  Mar- 
garet shared  Tom's  satisfaction.  She  could  hardly  be 
got  to  move  from  Thrigsby  and  would  not  hear  of  visit- 
ing Scotland.  Occasionally  she  would  stay  with  the 
Greigs  for  the  sake  of  seeing  her  daughter.  She  had  set 
her  heart  on  reconciling  her  two  sons,  so  that  Jamie 
could  be  taken  back  into  the  firm  and  so  redeem  the  years 

279 


*8o  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

he  had  wasted  at  the  bank.  She  would  often  broach 
the  subject  with  Tom,  who  would  say :  "Now,  mother, 
mother,  don't  meddle  in  business.  I  cannot  have  my  own 
brother  in  my  employ.  It  would  never  do.  If  Jamie 
has  money  and  cares  to  put  it  into  the  business  that  is  a 
different  matter." — "But  he  has  ability." — "He  chooses 
to  waste  it  on  the  play-house  and  the  writing.  That  is 
his  affair.  There's  plenty  of  ability  in  the  firm.  We 
must  all  suffer  for  our  mistakes  and  he  made  the  mistake 
of  annoying  Uncle  Andrew.  If  he  stays  where  he  is 
he  may  step  into  Mr.  Blair's  shoes.  That's  all  the  hope 
there  is  for  him.  I  hope  I'm  not  wanting  in  affection 
for  my  own  brother  but  business  is  business.  He  knows 
that  as  well  as  I  do  and  doesn't  expect  anything  of  the 
kind.  Besides  he  is  quite  happy  as  he  is." — Said  Mar- 
garet:— "I  am  not  so  sure  of  that  and  what  I  want  to 
see  is  the  two  of  you  working  together,  married,  with 
children,  so  that  the  Lawries  may  be  one  of  the  best- 
known  families  in  Thrigsby." — Tom  liked  that  and 
purred  to  himself. — "There'll  be  time  for  that  presently," 
he  said.  "All  in  good  time.  You'd  have  us  the  Royal 
Family,  if  you  could  have  your  way,  mother." — "In- 
deed," answered  she,  "if  I  had  my  way  I  would  not 
change  places  with  the  Queen." 

When  she  sounded  Jamie  she  found  him  annoyingly 
contented  with  his  place  in  the  bank.  He  would  smile  at 
her  and  say:  "When  I'm  manager  of  Cateaton's  even 
Tom  will  have  to  take  his  hat  off  to  me.  He's  after 
money,  like  all  the  rest.  Well — I  shall  be  the  shining 
symbol  of  money." — "It  isn't  money,"  said  Margaret— 
"What  is  it,  then?  Why  else  are  nine-tenths  of  the 
people  in  this  place  sunk  in  poverty?" — "There  is  no 
shame  in  poverty." — "By  God,"  said  Jamie,  "that  is  just 
what  I  think  there  is."  Then  Margaret  would  throw 


TOM  AND  AGNES  281 

up  her  hands  in  despair  of  ever  understanding  this  recal- 
citrant son  of  hers. — "What  do  you  want  me  to  be?" 
he  would  ask.  "Like  the  Greigs?"  She  would  clutch  at 
that :  "Yes.  Like  the  Greigs." — "Making  a  religion  of 
their  houses?" — "Oh!  Jamie,  if  you  would  not  be  so 
satirical!  I  want  you  to  fear  God,  of  course,  and  keep 
his  commandments." — "In  a  bank  of  all  places!" — "Then 
leave  the  bank,  and  put  your  savings  into  Tom's  busi- 
ness."— "And  fear  God,  with  Tom?  No,  mother.  You 
must  realise  that  Tom's  way  and  my  way  are  not  the 
same." — He  thought,  but  did  not  say,  that  Tom's  way 
led  as  far  from  God  as  it  was  possible  to  go. — "But, 
Jamie,"  she  said,  "I  don't  know  what  you  want.  You 
are  so  long  in  showing  any  signs  of  settling  down.  You 
never  tell  me  anything  of  yourself.  I  live  in  dread  of 
your  growing  into  a  Hubert." — "To  tell  you  the  truth, 
mother,  I  don't  think  I  know  myself.  The  only  person 
with  whom  I  would  change  shoes  is  Mary.  Meanwhile 
I  consider  myself  lucky  to  be  where  I  am  with  work 
enough  and  amusement  enough  and  friends  enough.  If  I 
can  work  and  have  my  friends  I  don't  think  I  want  any- 
thing more.  I'd  prefer  to  do  work  of  my  own  choosing 
but  I  can't  have  that  and  I'll  do  that  which  I  have  to 
do  as  well  as  I  can." — "I  wish  you  could  have  more 
ambition." — "My  ambition,"  said  Jamie  fiercely,  "is  to 
destroy  Thrigsby  and  all  its  works.  It  is  a  disease,  a 
foul  blot  on  the  world;  its  aims  are  mean  and  its  deeds 
are  wicked.  It  is  to-day  what  England  will  be  to- 
morrow. That's  true  and  God  help  England." — "I  for- 
bid you  to  talk  to  me  like  that,"  said  Margaret;  "you 
should  at  least  keep  that  for  your  abominable  friends." 
— "I'm  sorry,"  said  he.  "I'm  sorry.  I  couldn't  help 
saying  what  I  felt;  and  I  do  feel  that  very  strongly.  I 
can't  forget.  I  can't  forget  the  beauty  in  which  I  was 


282  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

brought  up.  One  wants — I  want — so  little  else.  Just 
beauty,  and,  if  it  comes,  love.  I  don't  want  to  be  richer 
than  my  neighbour.  I  don't  want  him  to  be  envious 
of  me.  If  he  cannot  be  my  friend,  let  him  ignore  me. 
There  is  room  for  both  of  us.  Oh !  there  is  room  for 
all  of  us  if  we  would  not  so  crowd  each  other  in." — "I 
never  thought,"  said  Margaret,  "that  you  could  be  so 
wicked.  It  has  been  a  great  grief  to  me." — "Oh !  I  am 
sorry,"  cried  he,  between  laughter  and  tears.  "I  am 
sorry,  but  what  I  say  and  what  I  do  are  very  different 
things — the  more's  the  pity.  Dear  mother,  I  am  sorry. 
But  do — do  let  us  keep  our  old  affection.  That,  at  least, 
is  not  altered  by  what  I  say  or  what  I  do." — And  Mar- 
garet melted.  She  caressed  him  and  said :  "I  am  only 
so  afraid  that  you  are  unhappy." — She  was  glad  to  have 
him  so,  like  a  child  come  to  her  with  his  hurt,  though 
he  could  not  make  her  understand  the  nature  of  it.  None 
of  her  children  had  ever  before  made  her  forget  that 
they  were  grown  men  and  women.  She  was  thankful, 
deeply,  for  the  irruption,  though  it  did  finally  depose 
Jamie  from  the  headship  of  the  family  and  in  a  way 
expelled  him  from  it.  He  and  she  were  no  longer  mother 
and  son,  but  fellow  human  beings  divided  and  joined 
by  their  consciousness  of  human  tragedy,  in  him  acute 
and  near  bursting  through  the  surface,  in  her  remote, 
dim,  only  felt  through  her  profoundest  instinct.  Both 
were  shaken  and  exhausted  by  the  experience  through 
which  they  had  passed :  his  brain  began  to  work  on  it :  she 
with  a  wan  smile  sank  back  into  her  life  of  habit,  giving 
up  hope  of  ever  bringing  him  into  it. — "Well,"  she  said, 
wiping  her  eyes,  "whatever  happens,  I  know  it  will 
be  for  the  best."— "That's  right,"  he  replied,  "and  let 
well  alone." 

He  was  left  reeling.     He  had  thought  his  crisis  over 


TOM  AND  AGNES  283 

long  ago,  had  not  looked  for  its  coming  to  a  head  so 
suddenly,  and  he  saw  with  a  horrible  clearness  how  ill 
equipped  he  was  to  deal  with  the  ruin  of  himself  left  by 
it.  He  had  thought  that  as  he  grew  older,  life  would 
become  simpler.  There  would  be  an  end  of  confusion; 
the  queer  elements  of  existence  would  take  shape  and 
order:  dissatisfaction  would  disappear:  things  as  they 
were  would  seem  justified  and  such  as  they  were,  he, 
such  as  he  was,  would  take  his  place  among  them.  But 
now  everything  was  denied:  the  folly  of  his  life  was 
revealed  to  him :  all  his  desire  was  gone  to  dust  and  he 
had  no  hope,  nothing  at  all  but  the  grim  knowledge  of 
the  tragedy  of  human  life.  Even  that  was  vague,  only, 
appallingly,  human  life  had  dwindled  to  cognisable  size, 
and  all  the  humming  business,  the  hurry,  the  jostling 
and  the  scramble  of  the  great  city  seemed  insignificant, 
idiotic,  absolutely  without  dignity.  Only  in  Margaret, 
in  his  mother,  was  there  dignity,  the  quality  that  could 
redeem  everything,  an  austerity  that  could  withstand  the 
pressure  of  the  external  world,  a  rock  upon  which  the 
waves  of  phenomena  could  break,  break  into  beauty.  It 
was  something  to  have  known  it  in  her.  It  was  worth 
any  torture,  any  misery  the  world  might  have  in  store  for 
him.  His  own  egoism  was  broken  by  it :  no  other  egoism 
mattered.  The  Lawriean  principle  with  which  he  had 
once  liked  to  amuse  himself  became  full  of  meaning 
now. — In  the  end  he  laughed.  That  was  quite  enough 
for  one  day.  Directly  he  had  a  clear  idea  he  perceived 
that  he  lost  interest.  He  saw  that  ideas  only  became 
clear  after  they  had  lost  their  potency  for  action.  That 
alone  was  important:  action,  instead  of  the  fatuous, 
ego-driven,  restless  activity  which  more  and  more  was 
becoming  the  rule  among  those  with  whom  he  lived  and 
worked. 


284  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

For  some  weeks  he  took  refuge  with  the  poets  and 
devoted  all  his  spare  time  to  reading.  Poetry  seemed 
to  him  the  noblest  kind  of  action.  If  he  could  have  been 
a  poet !  But  that  was  ruined  in  him  by  his  early  shyness, 
by  the  fatuous  conceit  in  which  he  had  taken  refuge 
from  it.  He  saw  how  poetry  died  directly  the  ideas  be- 
hind it  became  clear  and  were  wrested  by  the  intelligence 
or  the  heated  and  overwrought  mind  from  the  profound- 
est  understanding  in  which  alone  they  were  truly  appre- 
hended, so  that  they  could  be  wrought  upon  and  molten 
together  to  give  out  their  energy.  He  was  comforted  and 
it  amused  him  as  he  went  about  his  daily  business  at 
the  bank,  in  the  office  of  The  Weekly  Post,  at  the  theatre, 
giving  Fanny  her  lessons  on  a  Saturday — it  amused  him 
to  wonder  how  many  of  those  he  met  could  have  any 
idea  of  the  trials  through  which  he  was  passing.  He 
even  felt  physically  exalted.  Could  they  see  any  differ- 
ence in  his  carriage,  in  his  eyes,  on  his  lips?  He  had 
a  strange  feeling  that  his  lips  were  more  sensitive  and 
he  found  himself  speaking  with  greater  ease,  more  aptly, 
and  with  a  keen  pleasure  in  pronouncing  words. 

Tibby  became  very  attentive  to  him.  She  took  more 
care  over  his  food  and  his  clothes :  he  would  find  her 
waiting  to  open  the  door  for  him  when  he  came  home 
in  the  evening:  he  would  meet  her  on  the  stairs,  or  just 
outside  his  door  if  he  had  been  sitting  in  his  room.  She 
was  thinner  and  uglier  than  ever  and  her  shadowing 
irritated  him.  His  mind  was  full  of  the  grace  and  charm 
of  little  Fanny,  who  had  responded,  like  no  one  else,  to 
the  change  in  him.  She  had  become  eager  to  learn,  even 
with  the  tasks  that  had  once  been  most  distasteful  to  her. 
Teaching  her  was  a  joy  that  made  every  other  task,  every 
other  encounter  delightful.  In  town  Jamie  found  him- 
self popular  where  before  men  had  complained  of  his 


TOM  AND  AGNES  285 

damned  reserve.  Even  Tom  unbent  so  far  as  to  ask  him 
if  he  ever  thought  of  leaving  the  bank  and  how  much 
money  he  had  saved.  He  shut  up  like  an  oyster  when 
Jamie  said  he  had  only  seven  hundred  pounds.  Jamie 
laughed  and  said :  "I'm  sorry  I'm  such  a  failure,  but  I 
can't  help  spending  my  income  and  more."  Tom  an- 
swered :  "It  has  been  and  always  will  be  my  rule  never 
to  spend  more  than  a  third  of  my  income.  That  is  why 
I  have  postponed  marriage.  I  could  not  allow  marriage 
to  break  my  rule." — "If  I  made  a  rule,"  said  Jamie,  "I 
should  be  afraid  of  its  breaking  my  marriage." — "I  sup- 
pose that's  witty,"  sneered  Tom.  "I'm  always  hearing 
of  good  things  you  are  supposed  to  have  said.  I  will 
make  a  note  of  that." 

When  the  time  came  for  Jamie's  holidays  that  year 
his  mother  astonished  him  by  proposing  that  he  should 
spend  them  with  her  at  the  Greigs'. —  (As  a  rule  Tom 
took  her  to  Whitby  or  Llandudno.) — Now  Jamie  had 
planned  that  he  would  take  Fanny  and  her  mother  away 
to  the  country,  some  remote  rich  valley  with  wide  mead- 
ows and  a  tranquil  stream,  orchards  and  woods,  some 
blessed  place  where  the  bounty  of  Nature  could  induce 
drowsy  contentment  and  a  full  humour.  He  could  not 
refuse  his  mother  and  he  did  not  wish  to  disappoint 
Fanny.,  Would  she  mind  going  away  without  him? 
She  could  take  her  mum  with  her,  and  her  mum  could 
take  the  baby  and  he  would  come  at  the  end  of  the  time. 
Fanny  wept  but  consented  at  last,  and  it  ended  in  her 
whole  family,  including  her  father,  going  with  her,  while 
Jamie  went  with  his  mother  to  stay  with  the  Donald 
Greigs. 

Maggie  greeted  her  brother  warmly:  "You  know," 
she  said,  "mother's  letters  are  full  of  you,  nowadays. 
It  used  to  be  all  Tom,  Tom,  Tom — this,  that,  and  the 


286 


other.    But  now  it  is  Jamie  this  and  Jamie  that  and  Jamie 

says " — "She's  given  me  up  as  a  bad  job,"  replied 

he. — "Oh,  no,"  said  Maggie,  "she  says  you  are  a  great 
comfort  to  her  and  that  banking  is  a  most  useful  pro- 
fession. She  wrote  to  Mrs.  Donald  the  other  day  saying 
that  they  had  all  been  most  unjust  to  you." — Jamie 
clapped  his  sister  on  the  shoulder.  He  felt  sorry  for 
her.  She  looked  already  disappointed,  a  little  wizened 
and  worn.  Being  companion  to  Mrs.  Donald  was  a  diffi- 
cult position  and  she  had  no  hope  of  anything  else.  He 
said  to  her: — "If  Tom  doesn't  marry  soon  I'll  take  a 
house  and  you  shall  come  and  keep  it  for  me.  Mother 
can't  have  both  of  us  to  stay  with  her  for  ever."-  -"I 
think  I  must  stay  where  I  am.  They're  used  to  me  now. 
And  I  like  being  where  there  aren't  many  people.  Be- 
sides, I  am  happy.  The  vicar  here  is  a  most  interesting 
man  and  lends  me  German  magazines.  He  has  been  a 
missionary  in  China  and  has  written  some  translations 
of  Chinese  poems."  Pathetic  was  Maggie's  insistence  on 
her  contentment.  She  seemed  to  her  brother  a  broken 
creature. 

He  said  that  to  Agnes  whom  in  the  evening  of  the 
second  day  of  his  visit  he  took  out  on  the  lake  in  the 
family  boat,  a  great  heavy  tub.  The  rest  of  the  house- 
party  had  gone  for  an  excursion,  the  young  people  walk- 
ing over  the  fells,  the  elders  driving.  He  was  so  enjoy- 
ing the  solitude  and  peace  of  the  place  that  he  had  ex- 
cused himself:  and  Agnes  had  only  that  day  returned 
from  a  visit: — "We  are  all  so  fond  of  her,"  said  she, 
"and  so  sorry  for  her.  She  would  have  been  so  pretty: 
but  she  is  so  shy.  She  expects  pity  and  pity  seems  to 
hurt  her." — "I  love  to  hear  you  say  that,"  he  answered, 
"It  assures  me  that  I  haven't  made  a  fool  of  myself."- 
"How?"  asked  she. — "By  setting  you  up  on  a  pedestal." 


TOM  AND  AGNES  287 

— "You  shouldn't  have  done  that,  Jamie." — "In  the  be- 
ginning I  was  afraid  of  you,  as  I  used  to  be  afraid  of 
every  beautiful  thing.  I  could  never  trust  myself  with 
it.  I  could  never  trust  myself,  for  instance,  with  the  idea 
that  I  loved  you." — It  was  almost  dark  now.  Dark  shone 
the  lake,  reflecting  far  down,  beyond  the  shadow  of  the 
mountain,  the  yellow  sky.  There  were  no  stars  yet,  and 
the  mist  hung  in  wisps  above  the  water.  The  boat  glided 
along,  the  oars  dipping,  rattling  in  the  rowlocks  and 
dragging  a  silvery  trickle  over  the  water.  Agnes  hung 
her  head  and  folded  her  hands  in  her  lap.  The  boat 
glided  on  for  many  moments.  At  last  Jamie  said :  "I 
can  trust  myself  with  it  now,  Agnes — Agnes."-  -"Oh ! 
Jamie,"  she  said,  with  a  new  deep  note  of  sadness  in  her 
voice,  and  he  leaned  forward  to  catch  what  she  would 
say.  "Oh!  Jamie,  you  talk  as  though  life  were  poetry." 
And,  sadly,  she  -seemed  to  be  laughing  at  him. — "What 
else  is  it?"  he  asked.  "In  such  a  place  as  this,  on  such 
a  night.  I  tell  you  now  that  I  love  you,  and  it  is  almost 
enough  to  tell  you  so." — "There  is  more  in  love  than 
the  telling  of  it,"  said  she  and  that  brought  him  out  of 
the  ecstasy  in  which  he  had  been  floating. — "By  God! 
there  is,"  cried  he,  "and  that's  where  I've  been  a  fool, 
where  I've  let  it  slip  by  me  all  these  years." — She  had 
no  need  to  say  more.  He  knew  that  this  thing  also  had 
escaped  him,  that  he  must  enter  upon  the  new  phase  of 
his  life  for  which  he  had  been  so  eager  without  love. — 
"I  at  least  do  not  wish  you  to  be  sorry  for  me,"  he  said. 
She  made  no  answer.  They  were  a  couple  of  miles  from 
home.  He  dropped  the  oars  into  the  water  and  sent  the 
boat  spinning  along.  The  stars  came  out  and  in  the 
water  they  shone  and  danced  in  the  ripples  and  eddies 
left  behind  the  boat. — "I  wish,"  said  he,  "I  wish  I  could 
tell  one  note  from  another.  I'd  sing."  And  Agnes  sang 


288  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  ballad  of  the  Two  Sisters  of  Binnoric — Johnston  and 
Stirling  stand  on  the  Tay. — "I  like  the  skirl  of  that,"  said 
Jamie. — "You  are  very  Scots,"  said  she,  "and  most  like 
my  grandfather  of  any  of  them.  To-night  and  that  other 
night  when  you  talked  to  me  first  will  always  be  with 
me." — "It  may  be  too  late  for  me  to  love  you,"  said 
Jamie,  "but  I've  had  the  telling  of  it,  and  that  was  the 
pleasure  poor  Burns  could  never  resist."  He  gave  a 
chuckle.  "You'd  never  think,"  he  added,  "that  a  roman- 
tical  man  like  myself  was  a  bank  clerk."  And  Agnes 
laughed  too  and  so,  in  laughter,  they  hid  the  soreness  in 
their  hearts. — "It  was  a  week  ago,"  she  said,  "that  I 
promised  to  marry  Tom." — "Tom!"  All  the  laughter 
in  Jamie  died  away,  his  heart  ached  and  his  throat  was 
full.  Tom  and  Agnes !  That  was  laughable  but  grim ! 
That  beauty  in  Tom's  hands!  He  was  filled  with  rage. 
This  was  to  make  a  jack-fool  of  him.  "You  should 
have  told  me  that,  at  once,"  he  cried. — "We  arranged  to 
tell  no  one,  for  a  while." — "Why  not?" — "They — my 

father " 

They  had  reached  the  landing-stage  and  there,  a  huge, 
looming  figure,  stood  Tom. — "I  hope  you  are  well 
wrapped  up,  Agnes,"  said  he.  Jamie  ran  the  nose  of 
the  boat  into  the  bank,  leaped  out  and  fled.  Tom !  Sly. 
persistent,  obstinate  Tom,  and  Agnes. — "It's  a  defiance 
of  Nature,"  said  Jamie  to  himself  as  he  went  floundering 
through  the  shrubbery,  and  as  he  was  still  under  the 
delusion  that  Nature  was  extremly  like  Agnes  he  was 
soon  lost  in  a  pretty  confusion  of  thought.  Agnes  be- 
traying Nature  was  betraying  herself.  Tom  was  not 
guilty  of  that  treachery.  It  was  Tom's  way  to  get  what 
he  wanted,  but  Agnes,  Agnes  of  the  lake,  ought  to  have 
known  better. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  VANITY 


IT  took  Jamie  three  days  to  realise  that  he  and  not 
Tom  was  the  intruder,  and  he  only  arrived  at  that 
result  after  much  thought  and  real  suffering.  In  the 
first  place,  so  vain  is  the  male  of  the  human  species,  it 
was  mortifying  that  he  should  have  desired  a  woman 
who  could  give  a  moment's  consideration  to  Tom.  That 
lasted  hardly  any  time  at  all:  he  was  forced  to  allow 
Agnes  a  point  of  view  and  then,  by  the  illumination  it 
brought,  he  was  forced  to  see  that  he  ought  to  have 
done  this  years  ago.  Only  he  was  quite  sure  that  Tom 
did  not  allow  her  any  such  thing.  To  hold  "his  female 
in  due  awe"  was  Tom's  philosophy:  to  stand  between 
her  and  God,  and  dispense  divine  favours,  as  children, 
a  dress  allowance  and  occasional  pleasures.  Jamie  was 
quite  certain  of  that  though  he  and  his  brother  had  never 
discussed  the  matter  or  any  subject  germane  to  it.  He 
knew  it  was  so  because  it  had  also  been  his  own  youthful 
idea:  it  had  been  Andrew's  plan:  and  even  in  Hubert 
there  had  been  traces  of  such  despotism.  Why  not? 
Women  acquiesced  in  it.  Oh,  but  it  was  wrong  that  Agnes 
should  so  acquiesce.  Such  beauty  should  be  served,  not 
commanded.  That  certainly  he  had  done,  without  effect. 
He  had  made  no  impression,  had  been  so  wonderfully 
dull  that  Tom,  crashing  through  the  difficulties  put  in 

289 


290  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

his  way,  had  been  by  comparison,  exciting. — What  then 
was  Agnes'  point  of  view?  Being  a  healthy  young 
woman,  she  would  naturally  wish  to  be  married:  but, 
being  Agnes,  that  was  not  so  very  certain  either.  To 
be  married  would  be  for  her  to  be  dragged  from  the 
remoteness  which  she  had  always  enjoyed.  She  was  in- 
telligent but  of  a  temper  only  to  understand  things  at  a 
distance.  (Jamie  thought  she  was  like  himself  in  that.) 
There  was  some  truth  there,  and  yet  that  did  not  explain 
Tom.  He  tried  from  Tom's  point  of  view.  Admitting 
to  himself  that  Agnes  had  been  to  him  a  symbol  of 
beauty,  that  she  was  to  a  certain  extent  in  herself  a 
symbol  (a  most  unsatisfactory  thing  for  a  human  being 
to  be) — he  wondered  what  on  earth  Tom  could  see  in 
her.  A  prettier  woman  should  have  been  his  choice: 
a  pleasant  ornament  for  the  dinner-table.  Then  he 
pitched  on  a  theory  that  helped:  Tom  desired  nothing 
except  through  his  ambitions:  Agnes  would  stand  in 
his  eyes  for  success:  to  win  her  would  be  to  set  the 
crown  on  a  triumphant  youth,  to  pull  the  Lawries  up  to 
the  level  of  the  Greigs.  That  Agnes  had  a  considerable 
fortune  was  incidental.  The  chief  thing  for  Tom  was 
not  that  she  was  Agnes  but  that  she  was  a  Greig.  Most 
unsatisfying  for  her;  but  here  Jamie  had  to  concede  that 
his  own  realisation  of  her  had  hardly  been  more  ade- 
quate. He  had  perhaps  adored  most  of  all  her  remote- 
ness and  had  longed  to  share  it  and  this  under  no  circum- 
stances wrould  she  allow.  She  prized  it :  Tom  would 
never  intrude  upon  it.  He  would  fuss  over  her  body 
and  her  physical  health :  her  spirit  he  would  ignore 
entirely.  That  would  suit  her,  and  then  she  must  desire 
a  change  of  view.  She  had  hinted  more  than  once  at 
dissatisfaction  with  the  Greigs:  she  had  seen  from  her 
remoteness  all  that  there  was  to  be  seen  in  them,  and 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  VANITY  291 

who  could  be  more  amusing  than  Tom  when  seen  with 
sufficient  detachment? 

Painful  and  yet  pleasant  was  the  working  out  of  this 
intellectual  problem.  Not  for  a  moment  could  Jamie 
allow  that  the  betrothed  couple  might  be  after  their 
fashion  in  love  with  each  other.  They  were  certainly 
not  in  love  as  he  was  whenever  he  entered  in  any  degree 
upon  that  delicious  state,  but  he  was  forced  to  acknowl- 
edge that  between  the  two  as  factors  in  his  problem  and 
then  as  he  saw  them  daily  in  the  flesh — (for  Tom  had  ar- 
rived to  stay  and  to  seize  the  moment  for  the  forcing  of 
his  betrothal  upon  the  Greigs) — there  was  a  horrid  dis- 
crepancy which  he  rilled  conceitedly  with  a  wicked  scep- 
ticism. He  saw  more  malice  in  Agnes  than  in  fact  there 
was;  and  in  his  brother  he  perceived  only  the  fatuous 
arriviste  achieveing  that  at  which  he  had  aimed.  For  this 
vain  folly  Jamie  paid  handsomely  in  misery,  and  his 
love  for  Agnes  came  perilously  near  breaking  through 
from  his  head  to  his  heart,  would  have  done  so  indeed, 
and  brought  him  thus  early  in  life  to  tragedy,  but  for 
that  sure  shield  and  defence  of  the  heart,  Vanity. 

He  achieved  a  new  popularity  with  the  Greigs,  who 
like  the  other  branches  of  the  clan  prided  themselves  on 
their  intellect,  and  were  confident  that  the  superiority 
which  they  collectively  enjoyed  would  one  day  bring 
forth  a  being  of  true  as  opposed  to  mere  commercial 
eminence.  In  his  youth  Hubert  was  to  have  been  such 
a  being,  but  Andrew's  wife  destroyed  that  hope,  wherein 
for  the  Greigs  lay  her  deepest  wickedness. — Now  Jamie's 
fame  as  Quintus  Flumen  had  just  reached  the  dale  in- 
habited by  the  Greigs:  and  this,  aided  by  his  mother's 
volte-face  towards  him,  made  them  lend  him  their  ears. 
He  was  encouraged  to  hold  forth,  and,  being  plied  with 
Donald's  admirable  port,  had  no  difficulty  in  doing  so  fn 


292  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  evenings.  Besides  he  wished  to  outshine  Tom,  who 
could  always  hold  Donald's  attention  about  business, 
prices,  grey  cloth,  the  Far  East,  the  possibility  of  America 
doing  its  own  manufacturing.  The  theatre  as  a  topic 
was  impossible  for  the  Greigs  never  went  to  the  theatre ; 
poetry  served  for  a  night  or  two,  because  a  Greig  had 
married  a  kinswoman  of  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  and  old 
Angus  had  once  been  taken  to  dine  with  Samuel  Rogers, 
and  Christopher  North  had  more  than  once  attended  the 
great  Greig  garden-party  at  which  all  the  county  gath- 
ered; but  the  subject  could  not  last  long  because  no  one 
knew  anything  of  Wordsworth  except  his  grave,  and 
Keats,  Shelley  and  Byron  had  announced  ideals  upon 
which  Thrigsby  had  improved  in  practice.  It  was, 
curiously  enough,  when  the  Vestiges  of  Creation  cropped 
up  that  Jamie  was  able  to  expound  and  defend  the  poeti- 
cal attitude.  Then  he  talked  with  an  excited  confidence, 
keeping  clear  of  denunciation  and  fortunately  offending 
no  one,  but  saying  many  things  that  unknown  to  himself 
had  been  lying  next  his  heart.  His  luck  stood  by  him 
and  he  drew  most  largely  upon  Spenser  and  ended  to  the 
admiration  of  all  by  reciting  whole  passages  by  heart. 
The  Greigs  were  happy  and  exalted.  Here  was  one 
of  those  young  Lawries  proving  himself  on  lines  which 
threatened  no  Greig  preserve.  He  would  be  a  poet,  he 
would  be  famous.  They  could  point  to  him  and  say: 
Not  only  have  the  Greigs  and  the  Keiths  made  Thrigsby 
but  they  have  given  to  the  world  a  voice.  Poor  Jamie 
got  far  more  drunk  on  Donald's  praise  than  upon  Don- 
ald's port,  and  he  allowed  these  relations  of  his  night 
after  night  to  make  a  show  of  him  until  he  realised  that 
Agnes'  eyes  were  upon  him  and  that  from  her  remote- 
ness she  was  extracting  her  fill  of  amusement  out  of  him. 
He  became  horribly  aware  too  that  his  mother  was  suck- 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  VANITY  293 

ing  up  their  flattery  and  actually  allowing  the  Greigs  to 
put  the  Lawries  in  their  place.  It  was  enough  for  the 
Lawries  to  have  produced  this  marvel,  this  poet;  they 
need  look  for  no  more :  when  the  poet  had  conquered, 
when  his  works  were  published  in  London,  they  would 
have  justified  themselves.  The  Lawries  were  placed,  by 
these  Greigs  who  had  done  all  that  they  had  by  this  same 
process  of  allowing  strangers  to  approach  just  so  far  as 
to  be  useful  and  no  further.  Jamie  saw  that  in  one  flash 
of  insight :  he  understood  the  whole  household :  he 
understood  Agnes  too,  and  saw  that  she,  being  in  re- 
action against  it,  might  well  be,  though  never  so  little, 
in  love  with  his  brother.  Ever  so  little  would  suffice: 
she  would  be  so  glad  to  be  simply  and  womanly  in  love. 
It  was  almost  worth  having  made  a  fool  of  himself  to 
have  arrived  at  that,  but  about  himself  the  Greig  process 
had  begun  and  there  was  no  stopping  it.  It  would  grind 
the  Lawriean  principle  to  powder.  Only  flight  could 
save  him,  but  there  was  no  moving  his  mother.  She 
was  so  entirely  happy  in  Donald's  flattery  and  had  be^ 
gun  to  vow  that  Jamie  was  the  image  of  his  father. — • 
"It  is  time,"  said  Donald,  "that  Thrigsby  gave  the 
country  something  more  than  wealth  and  commercial  and 
political  ideas.  When  we  produce  artists,  poets,  thinkers, 
then  the  modern  English  city  will  rival  Florence.  I 
have  always  felt  myself  that  we  were  on  the  eve  of  a 
Renaissance.  Great  wealth,  great  luxury,  and  then,  art. 
Out  of  mortality,  immortality."  Donald  was  not  often 
given  to  talking  because  he  knew  that  he  could  so  easily 
talk  himself  off  his  balance.  This  happened  to  him  now 
and  he  went  on  talking.  He  dreaded  the  moment  when 
his  habitual  silence  would  return.  Everybody  else 
dreaded  it  for  him  and  the  atmosphere  was  highly 
charged.  Jamie  withdrew  himself,  profiting  by  his  new 


/THREE  SONS/  AND)  A  jM<DTHER 


l^ordswarth'si  grave 

thdt  wfeieip  Gdteddgeifrad  (occupied,  par  %/ 
JaveufoK'tffesrf  naetj,  ffartly!  in  :  the  f  (pathetic  t 
ipferswade.'hirjiseli,  that.he 
•gfe£)fcial»pufvhe  managed  Itf  Is 
irafcof  ihim^l^f  bwtijthcjf)iMer«f[S<i>)  lame 
witfailaughteir  rtorerii^cm,'  a»d;fW^nt  backup 


•bfeen  I  ,'  fwcitten*  I  orilyi  /the  (  {  jndst 
justify  a  imian,  in  writing  mOre 
.Qoleiridge'sv  luck  and  1  4refaift,  -.«. 

;  voices  pi?opne^yj»gf 


ing  !on  aiici  ,  oA  until  a  )  wJao^e  :  wof  Id  i  should 

ffhf  jnod.n  n/<{  ,Jr>f!j  ir, 


gtliffedi  (danger^ 


mogt  abvipbsi  Wayjftif'  a^sfert-ing  himself  . 
ling  Ithat  Agues  .feadipf^ 
.hts  /instinctive  process  ,of  ,\ 
Imagined  thaOhe  Grcigs  were  p 
jgenerally.  „  ;Mrs.  Donald'  Avas  (makingt 
.charmirtg  '  )to;  Margaret;  ;  Jd&  :  isej^cte^i  :  Mrs.o  -> 
ithfi  .person  to  tyhxarn  ifirs't.  tQicpofiderlthQjt&Jpi  qf(  t^e 

had!  re>tard 
&!"  i  H-e  .repe&ted  f  *'. 

vbr^  £a,tjtht.fchd  .^ftisaid  <;.  "jW^/caa't  gp 
r/-'  Aches'  .  fladeAii|f|yi.v//   Mre>  [  iPofta 
i^iSawi:  ->'fJ  ^yei?!  thought  } 
thingj  :'f-/The  •  good  r  crie&twe  f  n»wf  j  r  thought  jOtf 


BdhaM;;  did*  '«Hf  '  he¥'  'thinking  -!f  Of*  teiy  ^d  ars< 
ha;dTto  tfiiflkr  sh£"toeW  s^aigfh'f  to  hitii  afotf  Jt 
<  "That!  -stopped  liis'  talking.     He-  ctep^ed-hi 
h&UIJ  'ahd  !  w&it  !  over1  >'  td  se~e'  to  bk)th^r,  Agnes'  ;  ' 
Matthfe^'^ei^-^h^-  Wearying  itt-  middlb'lrfe'  of 
aft'd-  Thrigkby-  Md  tri^d-riiah^.'hobbie^  and  i 
had  ;ftjtiftd<  beihg:aii:  invalid'  tttore  ittteT^tih^ 
othierV  '/vtcr  Wtd  A^nfes  had'  Jbe^7  for  yeatfs  ;&  tainfetfcfi 
ahgd-1   Part^t  Mei'  iittrtietis^  cretttattfB  th^'  G^s!'  was 
diM46'tier  ^ftsyiflfehfi^ss;  ^ith  rfegard  tO^er  father,-;  fwtib 
v^as^-iriof  e1  \httff  fcappy  -  to  Simnief3'  in  'ttld;  'saiisf  action^  ^f 
tMr'-  ^rfeet  relationship.  •''•  Donal^^^neW&'^cfed  liptin 
'like  ''&$  :ti^n[  >  'a:  snail;  :  H^  shriVell^el  u{>!  and  teii 
'effort'  averted  ;  hivtisklfy  'f  Qi'got?  -!  his  .iHnfeks 
f'Ma^r-y  ?  5  .  Agries  malrry^  T^ohi^  LaM^rie/  -that 
§orn  tf  >w«^G-raJnidsott,??  'said-  Etonaldi^AH  '&»* 
same;.  -i.Ilj^s  infthejbloold.:>  AiiyoGe,  anyonfei.  but  Agnfis/' 
-  j  /  JEVen,  ^of:her  -own:  retatio'nsv  rit-  is,  toi  be  ofeerved;  'Aj^nes 
was  :a'/'iyhibol;  f/Tb-  the.  Gfeigs  'she  /stood  for/  'perfect 
,;  afl  that  thfey  Considered^  themselvfels.  tb  Jaav/e 
fti'  ;the  ipdust'dalisrti  tb)?y  had:  s/0 
i  j,  ,a,  kin4  ;  /pf'  ;  yirginityi,.  'a  .  I 


wa-s  -t^eyr-  pburch, 
sjgns_upon  Agnes^w/ere  a  yiolatj.op.  ,  If  she 


ni 

;<,;Nlatthew.  rang  'the  b^U,  3     y 

came  anii  receiyei  exppstuja-tjon  in^ie^e,  wf|:I>  J^ 
'-rusting  approval  of  ..pis  brptljerr'Sy.protes,^  ^p^;  entr^ati^s 


irid  drarr^aticaily  expressed  all  tfiat'  had  f  or.  wars 'en- 
teVtaiiied  her  iihtil  she  was  weary  of  it.    It  was  a  magnifi- 


296  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

cent  climax  and  must  be  the  end :  but,  because  she  was 
fond  of  the  two  old  gentlemen,  she  was  sorry. — "But 
suddenly,"  said  Matthew,  "suddenly  to  let  such  news 
burst  upon  us.  One  thought  you  did  not  marry  because 
you  were  fastidious,  and  had  your  full  share  of  the 
family  pride.  You  might  have  married  almost  any- 
body. You  had  your  seasons  in  London,  but  you  seemed 
to  despise  London." — "Yes,  papa,"  said  Agnes,  "we  do." 
— "Then  why  Thrigsby?  For  you  will  have  to  live  in 
Thrigsby." — "Our  money  comes  from  there." — "Aye," 
interjected  Donald,  "but  our  brains  come  from  Scot- 
land."— "Then,"  said  Agnes,  "we  should  live  in  Scot- 
land."— "Do  keep  to  the  point,"  cried  Matthew. — "Yes, 
please,"  said  Agnes,  knowing  that  this  was  the  one  thing 
no  Greig  could  ever  do.  Matthew  and  Donald  went  on 
talking  round  and  round  the  subject  until  she  told  them 
that  Tom  had  been  asking  her  for  the  last  four  years 
until  at  last  she  had  consented. — "At  least,"  asked  Mat- 
thew, "will  you  wait?" — "No,"  replied  she,  "Tom  has 
waited  all  those  years." — "Do  him  no  harm  to  wait  a 
little  longer." — "At  least,"  said  Matthew  suddenly  senti- 
mental, "at  least  I  hoped  you  would  wait  for  my  death." 
— This  baffled  even  Agnes,  accustomed  as  she  was  to  her 
father's  unscrupulous  egoism.  It  stiffened  her  in  her 
resistance;  made  her  feel  that  it  was  quite  time  she 
escaped. — "I  will  tell  Tom  to  come  and  see  you,"  she 
said. — "I  will  not  see  him,"  almost  whined  Matthew. — 
"Uncle  Donald  then."— "Someone,"  said  Donald,  "must 
look  into  his  finances." — "That,"  said  Agnes  maliciously, 
"is  all  Tom  wants."  And  then,  without  warning,  a  little 
storm  of  emotion  broke  upon  her  and  tears  came  to  her 
eyes. — "Oh!"  she  cried,  "if  only  you  would  for  one 
moment  think  of  me." — Donald  drew  himself  up  and 


THE  STRUGGLE  WITH  VANITY  297 

with  immense  dignity  he  said :  "In  every  crisis  we  must 
think  of  the  family." 

On  that  basis  Donald  conducted  his  interview  with 
Tom,  whose  finances  were  found  to  be  eminently  satis- 
factory. "He  was  given  to  understand  that  the  Greigs  re- 
fused to  admit  that  Agnes  would  pass  out  of  the  family 
or  immediately  to  suffer  his  entrance  to  it.  Opposition, 
in  a  word,  was  not  withdrawn  though  its  futility  was 
acknowledged. 

Over  the  negotiations  the  way  was  opened  up  for  the 
beginning  of  a  rapprochement  between  the  House  of 
Keith  and  the  House  of  Greig  which  had  for  forty  years 
been  separated  ever  since  a  quarrel  between  old  Andrew 
and  old  Angus.  Tom  was  satisfied.  Jamie  was  eclipsed. 
As  for  Margaret  she  was  in  the  farthest  heaven  of  de- 
light. Agnes  Greig,  that  fine  flower  of  the  family,  was 
to  be  Agnes  Lawrie ;  all  that  she  had  suffered  from  her 
descent  from  her  own  family  was  healed  in  this  triumph. 
She  was  free  as  never  before  to  rejoice  in  her  sons,  most 
of  all  now  in  Tom,  tentatively  and  hopefully  in  Jamie, 
and  only  in  John  was  she  now  disappointed.  It  seemed 
to  her  a  confession  of  weakness  in  him  that  he  should 
have  gone  away  to  the  Colonies.  A  glorious  victory! 
Her  tongue  was  loosed.  She  sought  Jamie's  company 
and  began  to  tell  him  of  all  she  had  suffered  from  the 
time  when  she  had  been  left  to  bring  them  all  up  on 
her  pension,  until  now — now — when  Tom's  fortune  was 
made.  "And,  dear  Jamie,  I  am  so  happy  now  that  I  can 
talk  to  you.  Dear  Tom  is  so  absorbed,  so  taken  up  with 
his  Agnes.  And  I  am  so  glad  that  it  is  Tom  and  not 
you  who  are  going  to  be  married,  for  I  can  look  forward 
to  being  alone  with  you.  And  if  Tom  could  now  make 

room  for  you  in  the  firm " — "I'll  stick  to  my  bank," 

said  Jamie  and  he  let  her  go  crooning  on.  Of  all  the 


29$  TOftEB1  3WS/ A  W  ;A  MOTHER 

peffStfns  .engaged  she  was  the  most  truly  happy.  In  vain 
did  he  look  in  Tom  and  Agnes  for  the  enchanted  wo^ider; 
that  -should- be  inlovers;  When  he  saw  them  together  jhe 
was  reffliinied  of  ,the;gqo4  peQpie/coming  out  of  church 
gentkmen  in  stiff  broadcloth,  ladies  in 
marriage,  he  thought,  between  a  frock-coat 
and  a  crinoline*  A»4:  when  he  remembered  the  dreams 
of  Agues:  that; lor. years  had  hovered  in  his  mind,  then 
he  was  sad  indeed.  He  shared  rather  the  depression  of 
tbft  Gfeigs  than  the  elation  Qf  his  own  family,  and,  in- 
dee^  he  itoo,  had  been  defeated.  And  so  listless  was  his 
vanity /that  his  heart  was  left  unprotected,  and  a  little,  a 
very  little,  of  his  love. for  Agnes  found  its  way  into  it 
atod  rriade-  him  very  wretched.  .He  was  glad  when,  the 
wadding  having  been  fixed,  his  mother  withdrew  trium- 
phant /from  the  field  and  he  could  return  with  her  to 
Thrigsby.  This  time  he  was.  glad  to  see  the  city,  to  take 
up  his  career  there,  arid  to  feel  that,  for  good  or  ill,  he 
had  to  work  but  his  share  of  the  clan's  history  in  the 
ugliness  the  clan  had  helped  to  make.  Ah!  if  he  could 
bring  some  little  beauty  into  it,  if  his  miserable  love  .for 
Agnes  could, borne : to: flower  there  and  do  some  service 
/. 
id\ 

Dfl?  rrroit  f^ji^n^  l»:rl  vrl-j  lln  lo  rr 
no  qw  HB  rn^rlj  ^n  !A  na&cf  br,r 

arif/iiol  a'moT  n^Hv/ — v/orr- 

I  JnrlJ  -ffon  yqqnri  o<  rns  I  .airnfil  'n.^L  .  .5; 

rljiv/  q«  nt>5lc}  02  .b&dio^dn  os  %t  rrr>  T  T/rjG  ;  /lie; 

•on  bfi£  moT  r:i  )i  J£f!)  bfilg  I   bnA  .  till 

>lool  n/io  I  •?••/!  .btjinr.rn  od  oi  ^  • 
-//on  bfmo  rnoT  li  Ln/.     .uov  diiv/  si: 

",>Jrn;d  v/n  oj  >f-ji)>  II'T" — " rmft  aril  m  t; 

wli  111;  "tO  •>      •    ' 


H3HTOM  A  CT/IA  8XO«  33HHT  oo£ 

nBsrn  c\d8§hriT  lo  rmblitb  -isv^b  or(j  "lo  ynsm 
j  barteiw  3fl  ^BfiJ  'isrl  ni  aiuafisiq  ni:'  «/;•//  ojrjyu  ur^ 

-ml    r'.E^f    oilV/    .vddiT    iljr//     J;M!    uj     i^il    >I'.»j)    -jil    bin;    ji 
yddfT  bltie'  ".blulj  ,!''ii!,y  — .uvjils  i3rt"7t!TT!Ttfi5TTT 


bsl§  08  m'l"-  -'^S^^T^^terP^^Hr^V0  .bsabrri  viu;l   r, 

.  i  »  -T    t     r  .rv^Al/\ir  l-llflx.    A.A.V11    ,,  r       i  r 

JA      .ynn^7!  b^ulinq     ,T3iDioe  £  ^lE-n  rnai  snv/jjJ  .•i'/. 
j'nbib  I  bnn  isibloa  £  Jaufafiv/'  art  Jrljii.'oii)  I  UK  1-.>  1^'u'i 

...  T       T/r      AMBITION     , 

'.({/.  —  .anwfiJ  .iM  nijslq  SBW  an  nariv/-  rrnn  s^n^om 


ilatte!  t6^toja<»  i©  became  jsuware  i^ 
I?;  e.t^iitthing^^heri'he^aokedrfeackrcih'it,  showed  cbmic. 


mobt 
tiD>  istoji 


take 
Uye. 
as  the  bank  was  becoming  iftQrBdMf 


ifl^ey, 


;^n,  her  :|jj^  tra^d^f  t|ie-  precocious  >  sharpn?§$  of  . 
299 


300  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

many  of  the  clever  children  of  Thrigsby's  mean  streets. 
So  acute  was  his  pleasure  in  her  that  he  wished  to  share 
it  and  he  took  her  to  tea  with  Tibby,  who  was  im- 
mediately her  slave. — "Child,  child,"  said  Tibby,  "you're 
a  fairy  indeed,  out  of  the  play-acting." — "I'm  so  glad 
Mr.  Lawrie  isn't  really  a  soldier,"  prattled  Fanny.  "At 
first  of  all  I  thought  he  was  just  a  soldier  and  I  didn't 
recognise  him  when  he  was  plain  Mr.  Lawrie." — "Ah! 
He's  a  grand  man,"  sighed  Tibby. — (Jamie  had  left 
them  together.) — "Mr.  Wilcox  says  he  would  have  been 
a  great  actor."— "God  forbid!"  said  Tibby.— "Why ?" 
asked  Fanny.  "I'm  an  actress." — "You,  child,  an 
actress?  Actresses  are  hussies.  He's  a  grand  man  is 
Mr.  Lawrie,  and  he  goes  among  the  actresses  to  relieve 
his  feelings,  and,  let  me  tell  you,  there's  not  many  has 
such  feelings  to  relieve.  If  we  were  in  Scotland  now 
they  would  make  him  a  minister  or  a  professor.  He 
would  be  looked  up  to  anywhere." — "Yes,"  said  Fanny, 
"he's  so  tall ;  but  he  doesn't  like  being  looked  up  to.  He 
looks  quite  unhappy  if  I  even  tell  him  what  they  say 
about  him  at  the  theatre." 

Jamie  returned  and  teased  Fanny  because  she  had 
made  so  great  a  hole  in  the  cake. — "You  like  our  Scots 
cooking?"  he  asked.  "Next  time  you  come  we'll  have 
scones  and  honey.  You  can  take  what  is  left  of  the  cake 
home  to  your  mother."  Fanny  beamed  at  that. — "O, 
mum  will  like  that ;  she'll  be  so  proud,  but  I  don't  think 
she'll  eat  any  of  it.  She'll  want  to  keep  it  in  her  treasure 
drawer." — "Then  you  sha'n't  take  it,"  said  Tibby.  "I 
made  the  cake  to  be  eaten." — "If  you  cut  it  in  slices," 
said  Fanny  thoughtfully,  "I  think  she  wouldn't  keep 
it.  Six  slices,  one  for  each,  and  a  big  one  for  dad." 

Jamie  was  just  cutting  the  cake  when  Margaret  came 
down  into  the  kitchen  to  see  Tibby.  She  was  taken 


AMBITION  301 


aback  to  see  the  child  sitting  at  the  table. — "My  friend, 
Fanny  Shaw,"  said  Jamie.  "Fanny,  this  is  my  mother." 
The  child  dropped  to  her  feet  and  bobbed  a  curtsey,  and 
Margaret  bowed  gravely.  She  was  overcome  with  shy- 
ness and  Fanny  was  at  once  alarmed,  disappointed  too 
for  the  mother  of  her  wonderful  friend  should  have  been 
wonderful  also.  Margaret  seemed  to  be  very  much  the 
fine  lady,  made  more  awful  by  the  mutch  she  was  wear- 
ing.— "Tibby,"  said  Margaret,  "Miss  Agnes  is  coming  to 
stay  a  night  or  two  with  us  and  you  must  air  the  best 
linen  sheets." — Jamie  winced  at  the  mention  of  Agnes, 
and  that  did  not  escape  Fanny's  sharp  eyes  and  keen 
instincts.  Her  perturbation  communicated  itself  to 
Tibby  who  turned  her  mournful  eyes  upon  Jamie. — 
"Fanny  is  my  best  friend,"  said  he.  "We  were  cutting 
up  the  cake  for  the  family." — "We  don't  often  have 
cake,"  said  Fanny. — Margaret  smiled  uneasily  and  with 
the  best  intentions  of  saying  the  right  thing  remarked: 
"I'm  sure  you  are  a  good  little  girl."— That  "little  girl" 
finished  the  party.  Jamie  relapsed  into  a  gloomy  silence 
and  Tibby  began  to  talk  about  the  linen  sheets,  while  she 
made  a  rough  parcel  of  the  cake.  With  this  presently 
Jamie  and  Fanny  sallied  forth,  he  unable  to  say  a  word. 
She  was  used  to  that  mood  in  him  and  had  learned  that 
it  was  best  to  talk  through  it.  She  rattled  on :  "Tibby 
looks  like  a  witch,  doesn't  she?  I  was  frightened  of 
her  at  first,  but  she  isn't  a  bit  like  a  witch  really.  And 
when  she  talked  about  you  I  was  quite  happy  again.  I 
often  wondered  what  grown-up  people's  mothers  were 

like  and  when  she  talked  about  Agnes " — "For  God's 

sake,  child,"  said  Jamie,  "be  quiet." — Poor  Fanny's 
lips  trembled.  He  had  never  spoken  to  her  like  that  be- 
fore. Who  was  this  Agnes  who  could  cast  so  dark  a 
shadow  ? 


THREE  SO$$IA}fty-A  MOTHER 


they 
rerrtoife  li 


$tagfc 


he# 
r17  thfe  'f>6»f  ifof 


'  sht>ckih^ 
df  'm 


-s 


^the  'onfy  -^ 


to 

Sought  f  oat  -  Mi-, 
e  ^deptHs  '.' 
id;  /^aftd  ^ 
*1;^  m 
;*  Not  f« 

abo 
^^ 

they 


-home 


m'«  Hsd'tb'lflta  a- 


sofntone  ^'art 

iihafe«ii»/fto"1tWs''isl  a  dog's  ;Kfe,  ^notHih^  but 
fl§Slii^tt(  Quint,  if  it  AVasn't  for  iydta 
up  m  print  wefck  after  week  many  of  us 

some 


ing  of  giving  it  up.    It's  quite  time  I  made  up 


<  3:1  HHT 


what  I  am  going  to  be7Jand,  you 
liked  it,  and  there's  n$r  gating 


;     "It-  ; 


bk  there  w 

^  once,  ;oi8i|ftrlfil's{  have 


elaborated,  r 
season.,  [  ( 

hp  wpujd  ;$ee  whatr  c(? 
thinking-,  <?f  iFanny 
within  ; 


done,  {, 

beM<eyed  h"im,{lfe>r  i 
that 


raorr  he 

appreciation  VWhi 

service  6f  the  ihfeatfe., 

aE'  would  b^jwettlif  tba*/y<?>#&g  . 


the  ;minotr.atCtiYkiies;  bf:  - 

bearfd/7  hd/said  nowfj  ••</rWhatrs!;the 


eyleiy  thing  £or;  jth^,  :§^ke  j  pj5  ,  peaqe,  J^j  w^:  gi  ve_  up;-  ey.£t;yr> 

for  the  sake 
ig,  /M  that  . 


304  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

face  like  yours  if  you  hide  the  best  part  of  it?" — Jamie 
laughed  at  him. — "And  it  isn't  only  your  face,  it's  your 
talents.  Cut  off  your  beard,  drop  the  Quintus  Flumen, 
let  them  know  that  it's  James  Lawrie  who  makes  the 
broad-bottomed  blood-suckers  sit  up,  and  make  no  bones 
about  it."— "The  bank  wouldn't  stand  it."— "Then  let 
the  bank  lump  it." — "Where's  the  money  to  come  from 
then?" — "Oh,  damnation  take  the  money.  If  they  won't 
pay  for  art  we'll  give  it  them." — "You  might  if  they'd 
give  you  the  theatre  and  let  you  off  the  rent." — "You'd 
find  someone  to  stand  by  you." — "I  think  not." — "Well, 
all  I  can  say  is  that  if  you're  against  them  as  you  are, 
you  oughtn't  to  pretend  to  be  with  them.  You  don't 
injure  them  by  shilly-shallying  as  you  do :  you  only  hurt 
yourself." — "But  I'm  not  against  them." — "You  are. 
You  know  you  are,  only  you've  got  some  ridiculous  no- 
tion of  tolerating  everybody  and  everything  even  though 
they  let  everything  you  care  for  starve  to  death.  That's 
why  you  wear  that  beastly  beard,  because  you  can't  bear 
to  let  them  see  you  as  you  are." — This  was  nearer  the 
truth  than  Jamie  cared  to  allow.  He  said:  "Nonsense. 
I've  said  I'll  see  what  I  can  do  and  I  will.  I  certainly 
agree  that  the  theatre  in  this  town  is  treated  disgrace- 
fully, but  I'm  not  so  sure  either  that  the  town  isn't 
treated  disgracefully  by  the  theatre.  You're  a  conceited 
lot  and  I  think  that  if  an  artist  forgets  his  humility  he 
deserves  all  he  gets.  I  don't  say  that  if  he  remembers 
it  he  gets  what  he  deserves,  but  then,  if  he  does  re- 
member, he  probably  doesn't  care."  Mr.  Wilcox  flamed 
out:  "That's  it.  At  bottom  you  don't  care.  You're  a 
Scotchman  and  shrewd,  and  your  shrewdness  in  the 
end  will  be  the  death  of  you  as  it  was  with  that  old 
tyke,  Andrew." — "All  right,"  said  Jamie,  "that  remains 
to  be  seen."  He  prized  the  friendliness  of  Mr.  Wilcox, 


AMBITION  305 


drunken  and  foolish  though  he  might  be,  and  indeed  it 
was  the  friendliness  of  the  theatre's  atmosphere  that  he 
relished.  Jealousy  and  spite  there  were  in  plenty  but 
not  the  cold  and  ruthless  misery  of  Thrigsbeian  com- 
merce. In  the  theatre  a  man  would  appreciate  the  suc- 
cess even  of  his  enemy.  Crude  and  undisciplined  though 
it  might  be,  yet  there  was  the  will  to  work  for  the  com- 
mon good,  namely,  to  keep  the  theatre  open  in  the  face 
of  the  indifference  of  Thrigsby,  whose  people,  however, 
were  not  without  aesthetic  pretensions.  They  had  a  pub- 
lic Free  Library  paid  for  out  of  the  rates:  they  had  the 
Picture  Gallery  instituted  by  Sophia's  father:  they  had 
admirable  weekly  concerts  founded  by  the  growing  Ger- 
man colony:  only  the  theatre  they  would  not  patronise 
or  regard  as  a  source  of  pride.  That,  thought  our  James, 
with  a  touch  of  Greigishness,  it  would  be  for  him  to 
alter. 

As  he  walked  home  with  Fanny — for  distances  in 
Thrigsby  were  then  still  walkable — he  asked  her  why  she 
liked  the  acting,  and  her  answer  pleased  him.  She 
said :  "It's  like  being  in  a  story." — "But  doesn't  it  matter 
what  kind  of  a  story?" — She  thought  that  over  a  moment 
and  then  answered:  "Oh!  no." — And  that  settled  for 
him  one  of  the  questions  which  had  often  puzzled  him, 
why  the  actors  were  apparently  unaware  of  the  fact 
that  they  were  boring  their  audience,  and  why  they  were 
hurt  with  surprise  when  he  as  critic  informed  them  that 
they  were  so  doing.  It  was  true :  it  was  nothing  to  Mr. 
Wilcox  whether  he  were  saying  "Mesopotamia"  or  the 
Garden  Speech  from  The  Winter's  Tale.  It  was  noth- 
ing to  Fanny  whether  she  were  Mustardseed  or  the 
Che-ild  in  melodrama.  And  somehow  that  was  right  for 
Fanny,  but  wrong  for  Mr.  Wilcox.  In  Fanny's  life 
there  was  still  so  much  enchantment  that  art  and  poetry 


306  THREE  SOK&iAMXA  MOTHER 

£oiild><notJ'be.  important  to  her.  'Indeed  there  was  in 
Pinny ? so -wiueh  beauty  that  no  .poet -had --ever  cawght'in 
Words*'  the  beauty  that  poets .  saw  in  their  Dramas'  -  be- 
fore>  even  it  Battle  to  the;  -reptdsttkv  -  which  ended  ;th  e»* 
pressioh.-^Jami^ had  the  repulsion* but  with him  it  nev*r 
dime-' W  expression,  "He  -had  always  to  go  back /again 
to:  make  'sure./:  Then  there  -ttfotiid  be  more  Tepulsiqnr;jso 
that  he 'was  .'nevef>s»t5ei.'fo^-'v?ry/'loug 'together.  There* 
fore- be  clung  to  Fanny/ and-the  idea  of  her  and  dreamed 
fantastically  of  her-  future,-  \vhen  -that  \vhich--hd  saw  in 
her  would  be  revealed  rtb  ail  men  and  ••through  them  hd 
ivould  be  sure.  On  thit  his  x^ueer  :  untrained  vinetai 
Scots  mind  worked  out  a  theory  of  the  theatbe 
its  collective;  appeal- im.de>  alt  'men  ^ure.^^Bat 
di'd  not  the  Church  d o  that  ?  It  made  them  sure  o£  a  God 
frfofm'g  in:  a,  mysterious  way, 'ibut^that: only  reconciled 
them  to  ugliness.  He  needed  to  be  sure  of  beaufryL 
Through  -Fanny  and  the  theatre 'he' -would  attains  that 
end. ^ Now,  he  thought,  he  knew^ivfeatiie  must  d6c^  Mr. 
Wilcoxr:had  given  him  the  opportunity,  Fanny  the  in- 
centive.:.' He  must  make  it 'possible  for  everyone  in  the 
theatre,  on:  erther  side;  of  the  footlights,;  to  know  and  to 
shire/lier;<joy.iin  living  in  a  story.  If  he  could  do  thatv 
orri help  to  do  that,  -he  wotiW  have  accomplished-"rnoTe 
than  either-  'ofteis ^brothers,-  and  his  sister  :Mary's  letters 
wnould/'nb  longer  .fLH,  him  with  envy  and  melancholy; 
That,  he!? felt  sure;  was:  what  Alary  meant  by  England 
giving  the  .world  something- for  :the  privileges;  slie  had 
enjoyed. — He  was  absundhy /an A  magnificently  ambitious, 
but  very<ha!ppyr  and  strode  along  idealising  Fanny  as 
she  trotted^ by  his  side,  until  ^he  remembered  that  he  had 
had  rriiach'tne  same  feeling  when  he  watched  her  putting 
her  little :  brother  to  bed  and  hearing  him  gabble  his 
prayers  and 'evening -'hymn: — "Pity  my  simplicity,  Suf- 


AMBITION  307 


fer  me  to  come  to  Thee."  Exactly  the  same  rush  of 
adoration,  the  same  swift  and  burning  hope,  the  same 
melting  into  weakness  and  resignation.  —  Then  he  laughed 
and  called  himself  a  sentimental  fool  and  told  himself 
that  if  he  could  ly^jfy  j^^Ti^^y  P¥*  ^e  Deserved  to 
have  the  bad  time  which  vaguely  ne  had  felt  was  in 
store  for  him,  and  ^mo^f  su/p^i^n^ly  had  not  yet  ar- 
rived. First  Selina,  tnen  Agnes,  men  Fanny  had  helped 
to  make  things  bearable.  —  It  was  a  poor  oort  of  man 
would  always  be  taking  refuge  behind  a  woman's  skirts. 


rf  «^&ntf«a&ff. 

,morlw  \o  ?.i3lhw  .arilaoO  nov  .V/  .{  bnr, 


io\  5J[ooI  Ylnr^v  jrf^im  uoY  .abfiarl  anri 
sH  .msrlj  lo  brjoiq  esw  aami;^  bnA  .Yda^nrlT  ni  3>lil 
^o  9bi?.  isrfjia  no  mooi-gninib  arij  ni  gnurl  marlJ  bgriarw 
lo  -iBarf  Jon  bluow  rrtoT  juQ  .isrijB^  giri  ^o  iijntioq  art) 
9tB  9f(  alirlw  nriri  Jr,  nwob  ^rinfil^  gnBmiaO  yiJzG^d  :  }i 
vda^iiflT  nr  ri^grjorta  gnBrrnaO  siaw  9i9rIT  "iisnnib  2frf 
fri  rnsriJ  jy^rn  oJ  sv^ri  oJ  ^rrdauggib  vIJnaiDfftijg  ;  SBW  Ji  SB 
Jo^  9fl  ri^riw  arriori  tB  rn^fb  gnibnft  Juorfjiv/ 


.Ilr,  JB  agniwfiib  ion  SIB  x9rf^  "    :  rnarfj  I)9ntmr,x9  rnoT 


Dfll  nwob  ~Aooi  rnoT  —  ".snojg  no  nwrnb 
on  JBfi)  bsvonq  boc  yrlqBi^oriJil  qn  bsmuJ  bnB 
3fiJ  9io^9i3flJ  Jj;rij  bnB  ,9noi8  Dfll  no  anob  ^BV/ 
nwo  11/07  Ji  avr.H"  —  .aJnhq  Jud  ^nhiJ^nB  acl  Jon  bluoo 

Oftft    7197    91B 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

TOM'S    MARRIAGE 


BEFORE  Agnes  came  on  her  visit — for  the  purchase 
with  her  future  husband  of  furniture,  household 
linen  and  clothes — there  had  been  almost  a  quarrel  be- 
tween the  two  brothers.  From  Berlin  Mary  had  sent 
her  James,  with  whom  alone  she  now  kept  up  any  regular 
correspondence,  two  handsome  lithographs  of  J.  P.  F. 
Richter  and  J.  W.  von  Goethe,  writers  of  whom,  through 
Mr.  Carlyle,  every  cultured  Scot  had  become  aware. 
They  were  fine  heads.  You  might  vainly  look  for  their 
like  in  Thrigsby.  And  James  was  proud  of  them.  He 
wished  them  hung  in  the  dining-room  on  either  side  of 
the  portrait  of  his  father.  But  Tom  would  not  hear  of 
it:  beastly  Germans  glaring  down  at  him  while  he  ate 
his  dinner?  There  were  Germans  enough  in  Thrigsby 
as  it  was;  sufficiently  disgusting  to  have  to  meet  them  in 
business  without  rinding  them  at  home  when  he  got 
there. — "But  they  are  very  fine  drawings,"  said  Jamie. 
Tom  examined  them:  "They  are  not  drawings  at  all. 
They  are  prints." — "Of  course  they  are:  lithographs, 
drawn  on  stone." — Tom  took  down  the  Encyclopaedia 
and  turned  up  lithography  and  proved  that  no  drawing 
was  done  on  the  stone,  and  that  therefore  the  portraits 
could  not  be  anything  but  prints. — "Have  it  your  own 
way  then,"  said  Jamie,  "but  they  are  very  fine  and  as 

308 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  309 

for  their  being  German,  they  are  poets,  so  that  it  doesn't 
count." — "Jean  Paul  never  wrote  a  line  of  poetry  in  his 
life." — "How  do  you  know?  Have  you  read  him?" — 
"No.  Have  you?"— "No." 

So  began  a  very  pretty  wrangle  which  was  carried  on 
for  the  best  part  of  a  week.  Tom  said  the  proper  place 
for  the  pictures  was  a  portfolio  so  that  when  Jamie 
wished  to  refresh  his  soul  with  them  he  could  take  them 
out  and  do  so;  or,  if  the  wretched  things  were  to  be 
framed  let  them  be  hung  on  the  landing  well  away  from 
the  skylight. — "I  shall  hang  them  in  the  dining-room," 
said  Jamie,  "and  I  don't  know  why  you  should  be  so 
dead  set  against  the  Germans.  The  Queen's  a  German 
and  I  don't  know  where  we  should  have  been  at  Waterloo 
without  them." — "Excuse  me,"  said  Tom  icily,  "the 
Germans  look  like  sheep  and  they  are  like  sheep.  Look 
at  your  Goethe !  Did  you  ever  see  such  a  mutton-head  ?" 
— "He  is  the  greatest  genius  since  Shakespeare." — "You 
make  me  sick  with  your  genius.  What  good  is  it?  I'd 
like  to  know.  All  the  trouble  in  the  world  that  isn't 
caused  by  women  is  caused  by  genius." — "You'll  deny 
Shakespeare  next." — "I  wouldn't  mind.  I  never  read 
him." — "Whom  do  you  read  then?" — "Malthus  and 
John  Stuart  Mill."— "O,  my  God!"— "But  I  don't  pro- 
pose to  disfigure  the  dining-room  with  their  portraits." 
"I  shall  have  the  pitcures  framed  and  I  shall  hang  them 
in  the  dining-room." — "Then  I  shall  remove  them." 

The  pictures  were  framed  and  hung  in  the  dining- 
room.  Whenever  Tom  entered  it  he  took  them  down 
from  the  wall,  and  as  soon  as  he  had  left  Jamie  replaced 
them.  At  last  they  had  their  meals  at  different  times 
and  for  six  days  did  not  speak  to  each  other.  Margaret 
tried  to  make  each  confess  the  cause  of  their  difference 
but  was  met  with  the  silence  in  which  both  were  skilled. 


310  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

She  observed  that  the  pictures  had  something  to  do  with 
it  and,  to  save  further  trouble,  removed  them  and  hung 
them  on  the  landing.  When  Jamie  asked  her  why  she 
had  done  that  she  said  that  Goethe  was  an  atheist  and 
she  could  not  have  him  in  her  dining-room  without 
offending  her  visitors  when  they  came  to  tea. — "And 
Jean  Paul?"  he  asked,  highly  amused  and  beginning  to 
recognise  that  the  whole  squabble  had  been  more  than 
a  little  silly. — "He  must  have  been  a  friend  of  Goethe's," 
said  Margaret,  "or  Mary  would  not  have  sent  them 
together." — "You  dear  innocent,"  cried  Jamie,  catching 
her  in  •  his  arms  and  hugging  her. — "Don't  do  that," 
said  she.  "Where's  your  dignity?  I  shouldn't  have 
minded  such  things  when  you  were  a  boy,  but  you  never 
did  them  then." — "That's  true,"  said  he.  "I  was  too 
shy  then.  First  shyness,  then  conceit  to  escape  from  the 
torment  of  it,  then — God  knows  what." — "Love,"  said 
Margaret,  "and  it's  quite  time  you  followed  Tom's  ex- 
ample."— "And  leave  you  alone,  mother?" — "I've  had 
years  to  get  used  to  the  thought  of  it." — "Then  you'll 
be  disappointed,  mother,  for  I'm  not  for  marrying.  "- 
"Then  do  you  settle  down  and  make  a  great  name  for 
yourself  and  conquer  this  wildness  that  has  come  over 
you." 

That,  however,  was  exactly  what  Jamie  had  no  mind 
to  do.  His  youth  had  come  upon  him  rather  out  of  its 
time  but  he  was  not  disposed,  for  that  reason,  to  forego 
it.  He  felt  himself,  every  now  and  then,  a  free  man, 
and  every  defiance  of  Tom  accentuated  that  feeling.  He 
looked  forward  to  Agnes'  coming.  Tom  might  have  all 
the  wonder  of  her  and  yet  be  infinitely  lower  than  him- 
self. Tom  might  have  her  pledge,  he  would  have  her 
sympathy  and  would  win  more  and  more  of  it.  Tom 
and  she  would  be  building  their  cage  while  outside  he 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  311 

would  be  free  in  mind  and  heart.  Agnes  might  feel 
it;  if  so,  she  would  be  open  to  suffering.  That  would 
be  his  gift  to  her,  the  capacity  for  suffering;  better, 
at  all  events,  than  the  absolute  negation  in  which  Elisa- 
beth, Andrew's  wife,  had  perished. 

In  such  fantasy  Jamie  thoroughly  enjoyed  himself, 
forgot  his  annoyance  over  the  pictures  and  made  it  up 
with  his  brother.  And  then  Agnes  came.  She  was  at 
tea  with  his  mother  when  he  returned  from  the  bank. 
As  soon  as  he  set  eyes  on  her  his  fantasy  came  tinkling 
down  like  a  broken  window.  Already  she  had  suffered. 
There  was  to  be  no  triumph  for  him.  He  knew  himself 
by  the  clear  light  of  her  eyes  for  the  Harlequin  that 
he  was.  He  was  to  take  his  mood  from  her.  That  he 
realised  in  a  flash.  She  was  taking  her  marriage  with 
Tom  seriously.  He  had  never  allowed  for  that.  To 
him  it  had  never  been  anything  but  comic.  Beauty  and 
the  Beast,  the  peculiar  Thrigsbeian  kind  of  Beast,  that 
would  admit  neither  enchantment  nor  wonder  even  in 
woman. — He  greeted  her  kindly,  sat  down  opposite  her 
and  munched  buttered  toast.  He  was  afraid  of  her  and 
was  faced  with  the  unpleasant  fact  that  he  had  always 
been  so. — "Is  the  wedding  fixed?"  he  asked. — "Six 
weeks  to-day,"  said  she. — "I  suppose  you'll  have  a  bigger 
house  than  this." — "Oh !  no.  Quite  small  to  begin  with." 
—"I  wonder  Tom  didn't  meet  you  at  the  station." — 
"He  said  he  would  if  he  could." — "You  know  how  busy 
Tom  has  been,"  said  Margaret,  "ever  since  all  this 
anxiety  over  the  situation  in  America." — "Uncle  Donald 
says  things  look  so  bad  that  we  ought  to  wait  until  some- 
thing is  settled." — "Don't  you  wait,"  said  Jamie,  rather 
surprised  at  his  own  words.  "If  I  were  getting  married 
I'd  not  let  the  Day  of  Judgment  interfere  with  it." — 
"Jamie!"  said  his  mother  scandalised.  However,  seeing 


312  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

that  Agnes  did  not  mind  the  profanity,  she  continued : 
"It  does  seem  a  shame  that  hard-working  people  should 
be  upset  by  things  that  happen  so  far  away.  But  if  it 
is  the  Lord's  will  I  suppose  it  must  be  done."  And  Jamie 
watched  Agnes.  He  was  puzzled  and  also  a  little 
alarmed  by  the  new  depth  in  her.  She  was  thinner  and, 
to  him,  even  more  beautiful  than  she  had  been;  more 
alive,  had  less  of  the  sweet  stupid  acquiescence  which 
in  most  of  the  women  of  his  acquaintance  irritated  him, 
though  it  had  previously  been  an  important  element  in 
her  charm.  Taking  her  marriage  seriously,  she  was 
going  to  allow  herself  to  be  dragged  into  the  welter  of 
Thrigsby,  where  her  fine  quality  would  be  ignored  as  com- 
pletely as  though  she  were  entering  a  harem.  Did  she 
feel  that  ?  Was  it  the  cause  of  her  suffering  ? — But  soon 
these  questions  no  longer  interested  him.  Her  suffering 
hurt  him  and  the  hurt  made  other  sensations  impossible, 
and  thoughts  all  foolish.  By  his  sympathy  he  knew  that 
he  was  separated  with  her  from  all  that  was  going  on 
round  them.  Yet  they  shared  nothing  except  her  suffer- 
ing. To  his  hurt  she  was  indifferent.  She  was,  he 
knew,  glad  of  it,  for  it  accentuated  and  confirmed  her 
solitude. — Then  with  a  rush  and  a  whirl  of  emotion  he 
was  all  worship  for  her.  She  had  that  dignity  which 
always  and  everywhere  he  was  seeking,  the  dignity  of 
the  human  soul  that  knows  its  loneliness,  over  the  depths 
of  which  all  passions,  all  sorrows,  all  delights  pass  and 
are  gone.  She  was  that  woman  in  white  of  whom  he  had 
read  in  an  old  Quaker's  book,  who,  in  the  centre  of  the 
earth,  "sate,  lookinge  at  time  how  it  passed  away."  She 
was  that  woman,  and  she  was  a  bride  on  the  eve  of  her 
wedding  day.  There  was  the  contradiction,  there  the 
suffering. — Her  eyes  met  his  and  he  saw  how  she  was  on 
her  guard  against  him.  He  had  divined  too  much. 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  313 

All  this  over  a  tea-table !  How  amusing  it  was  to  re- 
turn to  the  surface  of  things,  to  the  queer  ugly  dining- 
room,  to  his  mother's  fussy  proprietary  air  with  her 
future  daughter-in-law  who  was  both  to  gain  so  much 
by  entering  the  family,  and  also  was  to  bring  so  much 
to  it.  Margaret  was  simmering  with  pride  and  happi- 
ness. Tom's  wife  had  beauty,  wealth  and  position. 
What  more  was  needed? — and  she  was  satisfied  was 
Margaret :  all  her  plans,  all  her  privations  had  flowered 
in  this.  Her  cup  was  full. 

Then  Tom  came  in  and  to  his  brother's  torment  Agnes 
at  once  became  all  charm,  almost  all  coquetry.  She  rose 
to  greet  her  betrothed,  accepted  gladly  his  embraces,  and 
kissed  him  again  when  he  produced  a  present,  a  jewel. 
Margaret  crooned  and  purred  over  it  and  Tibby,  com- 
ing in  with  fresh  tea,  was  called  to  admire  it.  Then, 
quite  definitely,  Jamie  felt  that  he  was  apart  from  them 
all,  that  they  had  some  bond  of  union  which  he  could 
not  accept,  though  for  another  kind  of  union,  one  more 
intimate  and  less  factitious,  he  was  ripe  and  longing. 
For  him  Agnes  was  no  longer  herself,  but  a  very  charm- 
ing compound  of  good  manners,  Greig  tradition  and 
conventional  wifeliness.  His  rage  turned  against  her. 
How  could  she,  that  had  this  true  dignity,  so  submit, 
to  being  less  than  herself,  and,  being  less  than  herself, 
enter  upon  the  rare  mystery  of  marriage?  To  have  his 
rough  and  ready  way  with  it  was  well  enough  for  Tom, 
but  for  her? — Then  Tom  said:  "You  see,  my  dear,  we 
are  homely  people." — And  Agnes  answered:  "Homeli- 
ness is  what  I  want.  I  sometimes  wish  I  could  be  a 
poor  woman,  and  make  my  own  bread  on  Fridays  and 
wash  on  Mondays." — "That,  thank  God,"  said  Tom, 
"you  will  never  be." — "No,"  capped  Margaret,  "you  are 
spared  that,  Agnes." — "There's  many  a  poor  woman," 


THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 


said  Jamie,  "has  a  better  time  of  it  than  the  richest 
lady  in  the  land."  —  "Then  why,"  asked  Tom  frigidly, 
"do  we  all  try  to  get  rich  and  why  are  the  rich  re- 
spected?"- —  "God  knows,"  said  Jamie,  "unless  it  is  that 
they  can  make  a  show."  —  Tom  turned  to  Agnes  and  said  : 
"In  another  and  a  less  happy  country  my  brother  would 
be  a  revolutionary."  —  "Why  not  say  what  you  mean, 
Tom  ?"  asked  Jamie  pleasantly.  "I'd  be  a  fool  wherever 
I  was."  —  "That,"  answered  Tom,  "I  would  never  go 
so  far  as  to  say  of  one  of  my  own  blood,  or  indeed  of 
any  Scotsman."  —  "At  any  rate,"  continued  Jamie, 
"Tom's  no  fool,  is  he,  Agnes?"  And  Agnes  blushed.— 
"Sometimes,"  said  Margaret  gently,  "I  wonder  if  my 
two  sons  will  ever  be  grown  men."  And  she  put  them 
both  to  shame  by  telling  the  story  of  the  two  German 
portraits.  Agnes  smiled  and  patted  Tom's  hand  and 
said:  "Now  I  know  what  to  expect." 

So  conversation  ran  on,  but  Jamie's  imagination  was 
working  furiously  over  this  matter  of  his  brother's  mar- 
riage. It  brought  him  very  near  to  shaping  an  ideal. 
Mysteriously  it  had  thrown  his  mother  into  the  back- 
ground. She  and  her  beliefs  were  no  longer  significant, 
though  they  were  remotely  beautiful.  All  that  com- 
forted her  —  God,  the  Church,  the  family  —  was  of  no 
avail  for  this  younger  generation.  They  had  the  forms 
still  but  they  were  empty  and  there  was  no  health  in 
them.  But  where  to  turn  for  satisfaction?  Tom  ap- 
parently could  fill  the  void  with  material  success;  he 
could  materialise  everything,  even,  apparently,  the  pro- 
foundest  human  relations,  with  a  sublime  and  unshaken 
confidence,  because  the  forms  remained  and  he  never 
suspected  that  they  were  meaningless.  And  Agnes,  turn- 
ing from  her  family,  had  thought  Tom's  way  the  best. 
It  did  at  least  lead  to  security.  —  How  Jamie  detested  that 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  315 

word!  It  resounded  on  all  sides  of  him.  The  bank  was 
safe,  though  its  security  rested  upon  nothing  but  the 
good  will  of  its  customers.  Keith's  was  safe  as  long  as 
there  was  cotton  grown  in  America  and  a  market  in  India 
made  doubly  secure  by  the  British  Government.  Marri- 
age was  safe,  a  safeguard!  That  was  how  Agnes  had 
been  tempted.  Jamie  felt  that  he  was  near  the  truth, 
and  this  beautiful  creature's  suffering  was  so  heartrend- 
ing because  it  was  so  obscure. 

He  was  always  home  earlier  than  Tom  and  was  able 
to  have  several  talks  with  Agnes.  One  day  he  asked 
her  if  she  had  never  thought  of  entering  a  nunnery. — • 
"Perhaps  I  have,"  she  said.  "But  why  do  you  ask 
that?" — "Something,"  he  said,  "that  I  feel  in  your  na- 
ture."— "But  I  find  life  too  amusing.  Don't  you?" — 
"So  amusing  that  I  can  hardly  bear  it.  I  find  so  little 
that  is  serious." — '"And  yet  you  are  more  serious  than 
any  man  I  ever  met.  I  find  no  reason  for  quarrelling 
with  absurd  things  because  they  are  not  serious." — "But 
when  everything  seems  absurd  .  .  .  ?" — "That  could 
not  happen.  It  would  be  too  terrible  if  it  could." — '"I 
sometimes  think  that  it  is  happening,  that  all  the  old 
values  will  go  and  that  human  activity  will  become  un- 
directed and  idiotic." — "That  is  too  philosophical  for 
me." — "I  don't  want  to  be  that." — "You  oughtn't  to 
be  dissatisfied,  Jamie.  You  Lawries  have  done  very 
well." — -"For  whom?" — "For  yourselves.  I'm  sure  the 
way  you  have  all  stood  by  your  mother  is  perfectly 
splendid." — "Aye,  she's  satisfied,  or  I  imagine  she  is." 
— '"If  you  stand  by  your  wives  half  as  well,  you'll  have 
done  fine." — "But  I  think  there's  more  to  do  than  stand- 
ing by  women." — "Is  there  ?" — "Perhaps  it's  in  the  way 
of  doing  it." — "But  that  must  be  different  for  every- 
body."— "That's  true  and  my  way's  not  everybody's." 


316  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

— Agnes  smiled  at  that:     "No,"  she  said,  "I  wouldn't 
expect  it  of  you." 

Not  a  flicker  could  he  get  out  of  her.  She  was  serene, 
quick,  ingenious  to  turn  all  his  curious  emotions  back 
upon  him.  Almost  she  made  him  believe  that  his  first 
terrible  impression  was  illusory.  Philosophical!  All 
his  passionate  interest  in  her!  Philosophical,  and  there- 
fore not  to  be  considered.  He  protested :  "I  tell  you  I 
feel  that.  We've  stood  by  my  mother  but  we've  not 
believed  in  her,  and  if  you  do  a  thing  without  believing 
in  it  you  have  to  pay  dearly  for  it.  She's  believed  in 
the  Lawries  as  old  Angus  believed  in  the  Greigs,  but 
we  younger  ones  don't :  we  don't  believe  in  ourselves 
as  Lawries  and  Greigs  any  more  than  we  believe  in  our- 
selves as  Christians,  and  we  haven't  the  courage  to 
believe  in  ourselves  as  human  beings,  as  men  and  women. 
There's  a  deal  of  play-acting  crept  into  it  and  for  that 
reason  we  are  driving  the  soul  out  of  everything  that 
we  do." — <Agnes  was  alarmed  by  the  outburst  and  de- 
fended herself:  "It  isn't  true,  Jamie.  It  isn't  true. 
I  do  believe  in  myself  as  a  Christian  woman." — "If  you 
did,"  he  replied,  "you  would  be  even  now  in  a  nunnery." 
— "You  shall  not  say  such  things.  You  must  be  the 
unhappiest  man  alive  to  say  such  things." — He  went 
and  stood  by  the  window  gazing  out  into  the  little  gar- 
den where  in  the  apricot-coloured  light  of  the  evening 
sun  there  shone  the  golden  tassels  of  laburnum,  the 
white  and  mauve  drooping  heads  of  lilac. — "Yes,"  he 
said,  "if  I'm  against  that  I'm  against  everything,  every- 
thing that  they  do." — "Against  what?"  asked  she. — 
"Against  such  marriages  as  yours." — -"Oh!  Jamie." — "I 
see  a  flowering  beauty  in  you,"  he  said,  "like  the  beauty 
of  yon  flowers,  and  only  such  love  as  I  have  for  them 
is  worthy  of  you.  I  can  laugh  over  most  things  but 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  317 

not  over  the  profanation  of  such  beauty  as  that." — Agnes 
gave  a  little  moan  and  he  knew  that  she  was  weeping. 
He  turned  but  she  was  gone. 

Between  the  lilac  and  the  laburnum  Tom  appeared 
in  his  top  hat  and  broadcloth  suit,  carrying  a  little  shiny 
leather  hand-bag. — "Now,"  thought  Jamie  with  a  qualm, 
"she'll  tell  him  and  there'll  be  an  unholy  row." 

It  was  so.  Agnes  did  not  come  down  to  tea.  Tom 
went  up  to  her  room  and  found  her  weeping  and  she 
told  him  it  was  because  Jamie  was  so  unhappy  and 
had  been  saying  such  terrible  things.  Down  came  Tom 
in  a  fury: — "What  have  you  been  saying  to  Agnes?" — 
"I  told  her  a  little  of  what  I  felt."— "About  what?"— 
"About  the  sort  of  life  we  live." — "Speak  for  yourself." 
— "I  did." — "There  are  certain  things  of  which  we  do 
not  speak  to  women.  A  decent  man  would  realise  that 
a  woman  on  the  eve  of  her  marriage  is  in  a  sensitive 
condition." — "All  the  more  hope  of  her  understanding 
a  little  of  what  one  is  talking  about." — "There  are  cer- 
tain things  that  I  do  not  wish  my  wife  to  know." — Tom 
was  very  droll  in  his  sternness;  and  Jamie  flashed: 
"Look  here,  do  you  imagine  that  I  have  been  talking 
dirt  to  her?" — '"No.  Trash,  which  amounts  to  the 
same  thing.  I  know  the  sort  of  trash  you  love  to 
chew  until  you  can  stand  the  taste  of  it  no  longer  and 
must  spit  it  out." — "That's  a  pretty  simile,"  said  Jamie 
smiling. — "I  will  not  have  it,"  cried  Tom. — "You  can- 
not stop  the  thoughts  in  my  head." — "I  will  not  have 
the  pure  mind  of  an  innocent  girl  polluted  with  them. 
A  lot  of  free-thinking,  atheistical,  bombastical  trash." — 
"Hadn't  you  better  find  out  first  what  I  have  been  say- 
ing before  you  attempt  to  describe  it?" — "Man,  I  know. 
I  know  the  kind  of  things  have  been  in  your  mind 
since  you  chose  to  associate  with  that  adulterous  beast 


318  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Hubert.  You  can't  touch  pitch  without  being  denied, 
and  I've  been  a  fool  to  let  Agnes  come  here  with  you 
in  the  house.  If  anything  of  the  sort  occurs  again  I 
shall  be  compelled  to  forbid  you  to  enter  my  house 
when  I  am  married.  A  married  man  has  his  respon- 
sibilities."— 'Jamie's  mind  flew  to  old  Andrew :  the  same 
pathetic  uncomprehending  belief  in  marriage  as  mar- 
riage, and  very  much  as  Andrew  had  married  his  Elisa- 
beth was  Tom  now  marrying  Agnes. — "I  think  you've 
said  enough,"  muttered  Jamie.  "We're  on  delicate 
ground  and  a  word  too  much  might  be  fatal." — "To 
whom?" — "To  you.  You  might  understand  what  you 
are  doing." — "I  know  perfectly  what  I  am  doing,  thank 
you.  I  have  always  made  a  point  of  that." — "Very 
well,  then.  I'm  not  interfering.  Agnes  and  I  have  been 
very  good  friends.  I  hope  we  shall  continue  to  be  so." 
— "Don't  abuse  your  friendship,  that's  all.  /  understand 
you.  I  hope  Agnes  never  will,  at  least  until  she  is  more 
advanced  in  years." — '"Magnificent  Tommy!''  laughed 
James.  "The  perfect  Lawrie." — Tom  took  up  his  at- 
titude by  the  fireplace. — "I  have  said  all  I  wish  to  say. 
Bear  it  in  mind  and  we  can  consider  this  regrettable 
affair  closed.  If  you  choose  to  make  a  mockery  of 
me,  you  may,  but  you  shall  not  in  my  hearing  jeer  at 
the  family.  The  family  is  the  basis  of  the  state — 

Tibby  came  in: — "Thomas,  do  you  wish  the  sheets 
marked  with  initials  or  with  the  full  name?" — "They 
are  to  be  marked  T.  A.  Lawrie,"  said  Tom,  "and  the 
same  with  the  towels  and  table  napkins." — '"Thank  you." 
— "I'd  have  thought  you'd  have  linen  sheets." — "The 
best  cotton  fabrics  are  the  equal  of  linen." 

Jamie  chuckled  and  as  Tibby  went  out  her  solemn 
face  flashed  a  merry  twinkle  and  her  left  eye  closed  in 
a  wink.  Jamie  was  very  happy.  He  had  Tibby  to  share 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  319 

the  joy  of  this  sublime  Thomas  of  theirs,  who  took 
everything  solemnly  because  it  happened  to  be  himself 
who  was  doing  it.  But  at  once  he  was  filled  with  grief 
at  the  thought  of  Agnes  being  drawn  into  that  self- 
important  existence.  What  room  could  there  possibly 
be  in  it  for  her?  What  chance  had  she  of  finding  there 
the  intimacy  which  is  the  essence  of  marriage? — It  was 
that  hurt  Jamie  so,  though  he  fought  shy  of  it  and 
would  not  think  bluntly  of  it. 

He  had  no  further  opportunity  of  talking  with  Agnes. 
She  avoided  him,  or  would  only  approach  him  through 
his  affection  for  his  mother,  which,  by  her  appreciation 
of  it,  was  strengthened.  That  made  for  Margaret's 
happiness  in  which  there  was  now  no  shadow.  She 
felt  even  glad  that  Tom  was  going.  She  was  so  sure  of 
him,  but  for  Jamie  she  was  afraid.  There  had  always 
remained  with  her  something  of  the  mystery  to  a  woman 
of  her  first-born,  so  much,  often  so  overwhelmingly,  the 
father's  child.  Very  strangely,  though  she  often  played 
with  the  idea,  the  thought  of  Jamie's  marrying  filled 
her  with  dread,  but  for  Tom  she  could  excitedly  re- 
joice. 

And  with  her  excitement  grew  daily.  She  worked 
with  more  than  her  usual  exceptional  energy  at  the 
house  he  had  taken  a  couple  of  miles  away  near  the 
Scots  church,  for  Tom  adhered  to  the  faith  of  his  fathers 
and  would  enter  no  place  of  worship  where  the  Psalms 
were  sung  in  the  Book  version.  She  was  at  the  house 
all  day  long  with  Tibby,  and  often  alone  in  the  even- 
ings. It  was  bliss  to  her  to  be  there  and  to  fill  the 
house  with  dreams,  of  Tom  repairing  at  last  her  down- 
fall from  her  own  family,  bringing  a  Greig — no  less! 
— to  his  bed  and  board.  And  often  she  would  go  back 
in  memory  to  the  days  when  she  had  had  the  rule  of 


320  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

a  whole  parish.  Those  days  had  been  worth  all  the 
slights  put  upon  her  by  the  Keiths.  She  had  served 
the  Lord  and  seen  to  it  that  His  name  was  regarded  in 
every  house.  And  the  Lord  had  remembered  His  ser- 
vant, and  blessed  her  in  her  son  Thomas.  All  Mar- 
garet's days  before  the  wedding  were  days  of  thanks- 
giving and  she  prayed  that  Thomas  might  be  blessed 
with  sons  who  would  carry  the  name  of  Lawrie  higher 
yet  so  that  in  the  end  the  Greigs  and  the  Keiths  and 
even  the  Allison-Greigs  (though  their  behaviour  over 
Hubert  made  them  less  important)  should  bow  before 
it 

For  Tom's  wedding  there  were  no  false  economies. 
Donald  had  bought  a  new  silk  hat,  and  Mrs.  Donald  a 
new  grey  satin  gown,  and  Maggie  was  given  five  yards 
of  a  handsome  brocade  to  have  made  up  in  the  village. 
The  church  was  crammed  with  flowers  and  the  aisles 
were  strewn  with  reeds  and  rushes.  A  Suffragan 
Bishop  performed  the  ceremony.  Agnes'  father  was 
unwell  and  Donald  gave  her  away.  Jamie  was  best 
man,  though  Tom  had  been  almost  insulting  and  prac- 
tically said  in  so  many  words  that  the  Greigs  might 
think  it  queer  if  he  had  anybody  else. 

So  Jamie  stood  behind  his  brother  and  watched  him 
take  Agnes  to  be  his  wedded  wife.  He  saw  how  the 
solemnity  of  the  occasion  weighed  upon  her  and  it 
seemed  to  him  that  she  was  unhappily  conscious  of  his 
presence,  and  he  wished  he  had  made  excuses. 

Tom's  bearing  was  admirable.  He  looked  handsome 
and  carried  his  head  high  except  when  the  parson  was 
speaking  and  then  he  lowered  it  in  simple  humility.  He 
seemed  aware  of,  almost  to  proclaim,  his  strength;  too 
strong,  even  to  be  disdainful.  He  was  the  rock  to 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  321 

which  the  frail  creature,  standing,  almost  swaying  by 
his  side,  clung.  Indeed  they  were  a  fine  couple,  for 
Agnes  was  nearly  as  tall  as  he,  and  every  bit  as  dignified, 
in  spite  of  the  stiff  white  veil  she  wore  which  reminded 
Jamie  of  a  meat-safe. 

But  the  wedding  was  remarkable  and  interesting,  apart 
from  the  nobility  of  bride  and  bridegroom.  The  church 
contained  an  unrivalled  collection  of  Greigs,  all  solemn, 
sober,  stiff,  dour,  some  of  them  good-looking,  some  ugly, 
and  not  one  of  them  poor.  More  than  one  had  a  tear 
for  Agnes.  She  was,  in  a  sense,  all  that  was  left  to 
them  of  old  Angus,  and  she  was  going  out  of  the  family. 
To  them  her  wedding  was  almost  as  a  repetition  of  the 
funeral  of  their  great  man.  The  occasion  was  solemn 
and  they  had  paid  handsomely  for  it  in  wedding  pres- 
ents. Matthew  Greig's  house  was  bursting  with  them: 
a  harmonium,  an  alabaster  model  of  the  Acropolis,  an 
ink-stand  made  of  an  elephant's  tooth  (from  Surgeon- 
General  Archibald  Greig  of  the  Indian  Army),  carvers, 
fish-carvers,  game-carvers,  a  carved  ostrich-egg,  rose- 
bowls,  a  little  Swiss  chalet  in  a  glass  case,  the  poems 
of  Wordsworth,  the  essays  of  Emerson,  the  complete 
works  (to  date)  of  Charles  Dickens,  the  works  of  Schil- 
ler (from  Mary),  an  embroidered  screen  from  Maggie, 
and  much  money. — (Jamie  and  his  mother  had  agreed 
to  furnish  their  kitchen  for  them ;  his  idea,  so  that  Tibby 
could  help.) 

Nor  was  the  breakfast  stinted :  there  were  aspics  and 
birds,  tongues,  hams,  pressed  beef,  eggs,  trifles,  a  tow- 
ering wedding  cake,  and  for  every  guest  a  little  gift. 
Donald  made  a  speech;  compliments  to  every  illustrious 
Greig  there  present — the  Surgeon-General,  Professor  Ian 
Storey  Greig  of  Oxford,  Alpheus  Greig,  the  architect. 
As  the  head  of  the  great  family  Donald  was  proud.  He 


322  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

touched  on  all  the  important  events  since  the  last  gath- 
ering, triumphs  which  had  added  to  the  family's  lustre, 
disasters  which  had  failed  to  dim  it.  That  said,  he  came 
to  Agnes,  her  charm,  her  beauty,  her  grace,  her  bounty 
and  her  charity.  He  told  a  story  of  her  as  a  child  and 
tears  began  to  flow.  This  treasure  of  the  family  they 
were  giving  back  to  Thrigsby,  to  their  kinsman,  Thomas 
Lawrie — a  Keith  every  inch  of  him.  That  led  to  gene- 
alogy, in  which  there  was  a  perfect  orgy,  and  Walter 
Greig,  a  retired  doctor,  who  was  cracked  on  the  subject, 
claimed  through  cousins'  cousins'  cousins  kinship  with 
Robert  the  Bruce.  He  began  to  sing  Scots  Who,  Hac 
but  was  removed  by  Hubert,  glad  of  the  opportunity 
to  escape  from  the  speech-making. 

Tom  replied  tactfully,  even  eloquently.  He  knew 
the  part  the  Greigs  had  played  in  the  making  of  Thrigsby, 
the  part  they  were  playing  and  would  play  in  its  great 
history.  He  was  proud  to  be  a  Scotsman,  proud  to  be 
a  merchant  in  Thrigsby,  but  never  so  proud  as  on  this 
day  when  he  had  Agnes  Greig  to  be  his  wife. — "And 
the  Lawries?"  asked  Jamie  in  a  fury.  "I  am  proud 
also  to  be  a  Lawrie."  This  was  received  in  a  silence  so 
dead  as  to  force  Tom  to  sit  down  pale  with  wrath  at 
his  brother  for  having  spoiled  the  effect  of  his  speech. 

The  ladies  soon  left,  for  the  bride  must  be  prepared 
for  her  journey  to  London  where  the  honeymoon  was 
to  be  spent.  The  male  Greigs  crowded  round  Tom  and 
incorporated  him  into  the  family  with  handshakes  and 
initiation  into  one  or  two  of  the  family  jokes.  Jamie 
was  ignored  and  presently  he  slipped  away.  He  was 
genuinely  sorry  for  having  spoiled  Tom's  triumph,  for 
it  was  to  him  a  parting  of  the  ways  and  he  wished  that 
parting  to  be  amiable. 

He  walked  disconsolately  down  to  the  lake  and  there 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  323 

rather  to  his  annoyance  found  Hubert  and  Margaret, 
he  discoursing  to  her  of  the  beauties  of  the  scene  and 
comparing  it  with  their  native  scenes  in  Scotland.  Hu- 
bert had  attached  himself  to  Margaret  from  the  moment 
of  his  arrival  and  had  refused  to  be  shaken  off  though 
she  was  magnificently  frigid.  He  was  bent  on  amusing 
her  and  in  spite  of  herself  she  was  amused.  She  did 
not  often  meet  wicked  people  and  was  constantly  in  a 
pleasant  state  of  alarm. — "I  was  telling  your  mother, 
Jamie,  that  you  have  done  me  more  good  than  I  have 
you  harm,  and  that  she  must  not  object  to  my  being 
here  as  it  was  Agnes'  wish." — "And  I  was  telling  him," 
said  Margaret,  "that  I  am  sure  she  did  not  consult  Tom 
about  it."-  -"Her  last  graceful  act  as  an  independent 
person,"  said  Hubert;  "but  when  I  think  of  all  the 
Greigs  who  are  here  to-day  I  am  not  sorry  there  is  one 
the  less." — "I  must  say,"  laughed  Jamie,  "that  I  am 
glad  the  Lawries  are  so  few." — "Your  father  was  an 
only  son,"  said  Margaret,  "but  he  would  have  been  a 
very  proud  man  to-day,  even  though  the  service  was 
Anglican." — Hubert  chuckled:  "I  thought  Tom  looked 
a  finer  man  than  the  Bishop.  It  isn't  often  one  sees  a 
bridegroom  get  the  better  of  the  parson.  But  when  it 
comes  to  looks  the  Lawries  have  it.  I'll  say  that  for 
you,  ma'am." — "Skin-deep,"  ejaculated  Margaret.  Hu- 
bert went  on :  "For  brains  it's  the  Keiths.  As  for  the 
Greigs,  they  have  what  is  better  than  beauty  or  brains — 
self -worship." — Margaret  turned  to  Jamie:  "The  man 
has  done  nothing  but  talk  blethers  ever  since  I  set  foot 
in  the  place.  Will  you  take  me  back  to  the  house?  We 
must  be  there  to  see  Tom  and  Agnes  off." 

Jamie  had  one  moment  with  Agnes.  He  held  her 
hand  in  both  his:  "I  hope  you  will  be  very  happy,"  he 
said,  "with  all  my  heart." — "I'll  wish  you  the  same," 


324  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

said  she,  "and  may  it  come  to  you  soon.     Don't  waste 
all  your  life." 

He  dropped  her  hand.  She  ought  not  to  have  said 
that  to  him,  on  the  threshold  of  so  great  a  mystery. 
How  in  such  a  moment  could  she  judge  him?  Was  it 
no  mystery  to  her?  He  felt  very  unhappy. — "I'll  run 
my  risks,"  he  said. 

Tom  appeared  surrounded  by  half-a-dozen  Greigs. 
Jamie  held  out  his  hand,  and  muttered :  "Good  luck, 
Tommy."  And  Tom  just  touched  his  hand  and  said : 
"Remember,  I  trust  you  to  look  after  mother."  Then 
he  climbed  after  Agnes  into  the  best  Greig  barouche — ' 
three  horses,  with  a  postillion  on  the  leader.  Jamie  was 
left  speechless.  Rice,  slippers,  flowers  were  thrown 
as  the  carriage  moved  off. — "O  for  a  stone-bow  to  hit 
him  in  the  eye !"  said  Jamie  not  knowing  he  was  speak- 
ing aloud.  A  chuckle  discovered  Hubert  at  his  elbow. — 
"I  felt  like  that  in  church,"  said  Hubert,  "and  now  we 
have  to  share  in  the  Greig  family  merry-making.  If  I 
had  a  magic  carpet  I  would  send  it  to  London  to  fetch 
old  Mother  Bulloch." — "O  damn  you,  Hubert,"  cr;ed 
Jamie,  "you  are  like  an  omen  at  the  feast." 

Hubert  led  Jamie  away  and  told  him  with  every  air 
of  enthusiasm  that  he  had  taken  seriously  to  farming 
and  cattle-breeding,  or  horse-coping  as  he  preferred  to 
call  it. — "I'm  tired  of  trying  to  make  Thrigsby  appre- 
ciate the  blessings  of  culture  and  I'm  going  to  feed  the 
swine.  The  paper  stops  and  with  it  what  you  made 
out  of  it.  You'd  better  come  and  learn  to  be  a  farmer. 
I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  the  bucolic  was  really  your 
line." — Now  Jamie  suffered  little  by  this  new  freak  of 
Hubert's,  but  he  knew  that  Currie  Bigge  and  one  or  two 
others  would  suffer  much.  He  first  of  all  made  an  offer 
for  the  paper,  which  was  accepted,  and  then  he  told 


TOM'S  MARRIAGE  325 

Hubert  exactly  what  he  thought  of  him. — "You  are 
as  heartless  with  your  whims  as  the  rest  of  the  Greigs 
are  with  their  mills,"  he  said,  and  much  more. — "My 
dear  James,"  replied  Hubert  when  he  had  finished,  "don't 
for  heaven's  sake  take  your  reactions  seriously  or  you 
will  end  by  becoming  a  bore.  You  just  take  your  broth- 
er's tip.  The  only  sane  way  to  treat  the  Greigs  is  to 
get  what  you  can  out  of  them." 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

NEWS  FROM  JOHN 


"DOTH  Margaret  and  her  first-born  were  nervous  on 
*-*  their  return  home.  The  household  had  been  or- 
ganised for  Tom  and  his  absence  left  a  painful  gap 
and  caused  much  moral  dislocation.  Both  had  indeed 
existed  in  deference  to  the  successful  member  of  the 
family;  their  hours  had  been  his,  their  food  his  choice, 
their  evenings,  when  all  were  at  home,  had  been  par- 
celled out  by  him.  At  nine  Tom  would  play  backgam- 
mon with  his  mother;  at  eleven  he  would  take  out  his 
watch  and  say:  "I  am  going  to  my  bed,"  or  "Mother, 
it  is  your  bed-time."  Then  Margaret  would  take  up 
her  book  and  a  box  of  throat  lozenges,  kiss  her  two  sons 
on  the  brow  and  depart.  Tom  would  hesitate  for  a 
moment  and  say:  "So  ends  another  day."  Then  he 
would  follow  her,  leaving  Jamie  to  take  the  large  coals 
from  the  fire,  put  out  the  lamps,  bolt  the  doors,  and 
fasten  the  catches  of  the  windows.  Jamie  would  always 
linger  and  drink  in  the  vitality  of  the  quiet  household 
in  the  darkness,  for  it  had  then  a  life  of  its  own  in  the 
release  of  its  essence.  There  were  sounds  and  smells  and 
queer  shadows  thrown  through  the  windows;  noises  in 
the  streets  outside;  and  mystery  everywhere.  It  was  all 
very  fine  to  dream  of  liberty,  but  except  in  this  mystery 
what  freedom  could  there  be?  And  yet  Tom's  pres- 

326 


NEWS  FROM  JOHN  327 

ence  had  denied  it:  Tom,  taking  out  his  watch,  ended 
the  day.  Tom,  asserting  first  right  to  the  newspaper 
in  the  morning,  began  it. 

With  Tom  removed  Jamie  was  filled  with  hope  and 
dread,  hope  that  the  days  might  be  more  free,  dread 
lest  Tom  should  have  taken  with  him  some  essential 
of  their  economy.  Deep  in  his  heart  was  elation  that 
the  last  immediate  pressure  of  the  Keith  tradition  was 
gone  from  his  daily  existence.  He  could  assert  himself, 
perhaps  successfully  enough  to  repair  his  mother's  dis- 
appointment in  him.  That  he  had  felt  very  keenly. 
She  should  not  have  been  disappointed  in  him;  she 
should  have  seen  that  Tom's  way  was  not  his.  He 
and  she  were  with  each  other  so  inarticulate.  She  had 
been  very  happy  with  Tom's  preciseness,  and  it  was 
discomforting  for  her  to  be  left  with  Jamie's  mystery. 

For  several  days  they  groped  through  silence,  fum- 
bling for  new  habits  until  at  last  a  day  came  when 
Jamie,  over  tea,  gulped  out :  "I've  bad  tidings  for  you, 
mother."  She  trembled,  but  was  at  once  firm:  "Good 
news  or  bad,"  she  said,  "don't  be  afraid  of  it  for  me. 
Is  it  yourself?" — "No.  There's  no  news  of  me.  It's 

John." — "John?  Not "  At  once  she  thought  of 

John  dead,  young  proud  John,  dead. — "No,"  said  Jamie, 
"the  news  is  not  from  him,  but  here.  Murdoch's  have 
failed." — '"Murdoch's?" — -"The  old  story  of  giving  credit 
to  rotten  people.  They  have  let  the  bank  in  for  a  pretty 
penny,  and  they  came  to  us  through  John  and  me." — 
"I  was  against  it  from  the  very  first,"  said  Margaret, 
"and  so  was  Tom." — "It  was  a  good  firm  then,"  replied 
Jamie,  "but  there's  many  a  good  firm  dying  of  the  new 
ways  of  business.  I'm  thinking  what's  to  happen  to 
John  and  Sophia  and  their  bairns.  Maybe  it's  easier 
out  there  to  turn  your  hand  to  other  work.  I'm  thinking 


328  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

that  Tom  and  I  will  send  him  out  something  to  tide  him 
over.  It  will  be  weeks  before  he  can  know,  and  what- 
ever happened,  John  would  not  be  one  to  ask  for  help." 
— "I  should  think  not  indeed,"  said  Margaret,  "but  we 
can  send  it  him  and  then,  if  he  comes  home,  that  will 
leave  Tom  free  to  find  room  for  him  in  the  firm." — 
"There's  not  much  hope  of  that  for,  even  if  Tom  would, 
John  is  even  less  Tom's  man  that  I  am  and  Tom  knows 
that  he  has  a  better  head  for  business." — "Better  than 
Tom?" — "Aye,  that's  not  unthinkable.  I  go  so  far  as 
to  say  that  if  John  had  stayed  here  there  would  have 
been  no  failure  in  Murdoch's.  He's  canny  and  cautious 
and  bold."— "Will  you  tell  Tibby  or  shall  I?"  said  Mar- 
garet in  a  hushed  voice,  beginning  already  to  brood  over 
the  disgrace  that  had  come  upon  her  family.  Tibby  was 
informed  of  every  event  for  good  or  evil :  births,  deaths 
and  marriages  were  solemnly  laid  before  her,  almost  as 
a  rite.  She  had  become,  as  it  were,  the  visible  con- 
science of  the  family,  and,  as  such,  even  Tom  had  felt 
and  acknowledged  her  power.  She  was  a  good  and 
loyal  conscience  and  accepted  that  she  was  there  rather 
to  be  informed  than  consulted. 

In  the  evening  Jamie  called  Tibby  from  the  kitchen 
to  his  room  and  told  her  of  his  anxiety. — "Indeed,"  she 
said,  "I  thought  things  were  going  overwell.  It  was 
time  you  had  a  reminder." — "A  reminder  of  what?" — • 
"That  you  can't  have  everything  to  your  liking  or  all 
your  own  way.  But  I  did  not  conceive  that  the  blow 
would  fall  on  John,  him  so  far  away.  I  thought  he 
would  have  escaped  and  it  would  have  been  you  or  Tom 
— and  you  most  likely.  I  hope  the  mistress  has  not 
taken  it  too  unkindly." — "No.  She  has  been  very  brave. 
She  asked  me  to  tell  you." — '"I  would  have  preferred 
her  to  tell  me  herself  but  they  are  few  words  I  get  now 


NEWS  FROM  JOHN  329 

from  her  lips.  You  said  I  should  never  be  a  servant, 
Jamie,  but  I  am  that." — "No,  no.  You  have  been  with 
us  so  long,  and  grown  up  with  us." — "I  am  a  servant, 
Jamie,  and  I  would  prefer  not  to  be  told  anything  that 
it  does  not  come  easily  to  tell — for  the  mistress,  I  mean. 
She  meant  kindly  by  me,  I  know,  but  being  together  has 
been  too  much  for  us,  and  what  can't  come  from  her 
can't  come  from  you." — Very  gaunt  she  was  as  she 
stood  there  fingering  her  apron.  There  was  only  one 
lamp  in  the  room,  on  Jamie's  desk.  She  was  in  the 
shadow,  hovering,  shifting,  swaying.  Again,  as  once 
or  twice  before,  he  had  in  her  presence  the  feeling  of 
an  impact  with  some  profound  reality  and  immediately 
he  was  filled  with  sympathy  for  her.  He  did  not  under- 
stand her  scruple,  but  he  was  moved  to  ask  her:  "Are 
you  unhappy,  Tibby?" — She  answered:  "I'm  not  one 
of  those  who  look  for  happiness,  or  unhappiness  either, 
being  born  as  I  was." — He  knew  her  to  be  sensitive  on 
that  point  and  was  a  little  irritated  with  her  for  in- 
troducing it. — '"It's  a  poor  life,"  he  said,  "cooking,  wash- 
ing, cleaning." — "I've  no  scunner  against  it,"  replied 
she.  "It's  my  work  and  you  must  be  cooked  for,  washed 
for,  cleaned  for  and  I  would  not  let  any  other  body  do 
it  now." — "Is  it  Tom's  going  has  upset  you?" — "Noth- 
ing's upset  me.  There's  nothing  to  worry  over  in  John. 
He  can  look  after  himself.  And  as  for  Tom,  if  the 
country  were  invaded  and  conquered  he  would  be  the 

last  man  in  it  to  be  ruined." — "Then,  if  my  mother " 

Tibby  moved  towards  him. — '"You  have  not  to  say  a 
word  to  her.  She'd  send  me  away  if  she  knew  what 
I've  said  to  you.  She'd  send  me  away." — "But  you 
have  said  nothing." — On  that  Tibby  laughed,  a  little 
weary  chuckle. — "Less  than  nothing  would  be  enough  for 
her." 


330  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Jamie  remembered  Fanny  Shaw  saying  that  Tibby 
looked  like  a  witch.  She  did  so  now  and  he  felt  as 
though  she  had  cast  a  spell  on  him,  for  he  could  not 
take  his  eyes  off  her  nor  resist  the  tug  at  his  heart  nor 
raise  the  strange  weight  that  had  come  upon  his  brain. 
She  withdrew  back  into  the  darkness  and  hovered  there 
by  the  door.  Presently  she  said:  "It's  right  now, 
Jamie.  Just  you  and  me  and  her  in  the  house,  and  in 
the  end  me  and  her." — The  note  of  warning  in  her  voice 
sent  a  chill  through  him. — "Rubbish,  Tibby,  you're  not 
yourself.  You  should  have  a  holiday.  Go  home." — "I 
have  no  home  but  this." — "Then  go  to  Scotland." — "I'll 
never  go  to  Scotland  now  my  father's  dead." — "Then  let 
me  take  you  to  the  theatre." — "No.  The  theatre's  the 
ruin  of  you." — That  struck  home.  She  had  gone  too 
far.  He  was  not  going  to  have  that.  He  rose  and  moved 
towards  her.  For  a  moment  she  confronted  him  then 
shrank  away  and  slipped  out  of  the  room. 

With  his  mind  he  followed  her  down  the  dark  stairs 
to  the  kitchen  and  formed  a  picture  of  her  brooding, 
weaving  out  of  hints  and  whispers  the  story  of  the 
family,  but  he  saw  her  doing  this  as  an  artist,  indiffer- 
ently: of  her  feeling,  or  of  where  it  lay,  he  imagined 
nothing.  And  yet  unconsciously  he  believed  her  assur- 
ance that  no  harm  would  come  to  his  brother.  Here 
he  found  himself  sharply  divided  from  his  mother  who 
fretted  and  worried  over  it  all  day  long.  She  had 
made  no  allowance  for  failure  in  her  plans:  even  when 
her  sons  had  crossed  them  they  had  prospered.  Almost 
she  persuaded  herself  that  the  failure  of  Murdoch's  was 
a  direct  intervention  from  above  to  punish  her  for  some 
sin  that,  for  all  her  admirable  intentions,  she  had  com- 
mitted. The  discovery  of  the  sin  became  with  her  an 
engrossing  labour,  an  obsession.  She  had  not  properly 


NEWS  FROM  JOHN  331 

dedicated  her  offspring  to  the  Lord :  she  had  taken  too 
wordly  a  delight  in  them.  Every  day  she  wrote  long 
letters  not  only  to  Tom  and  John  but  also  to  Agnes  and 
Sophia,  exhorting  them  not  to  allow  their  children  to 
depart  from  the  way  of  the  Lord — as  laid  down  by 
Andrew  Keith  and  Angus  Greig,  who  had  accepted  their 
worldly  goods  humbly  as  the  due  reward  of  just  ser- 
vants. She  imagined  that  Tom  and  herself  had  achieved 
their  measure  of  success  more  by  works  than  by  faith 
and  therefore  she  was  punished. 

Every  night  she  made  Jamie  read  the  Bible  to  her, 
more  particularly  the  Mosaic  prohibitions.  She  was  a 
good  Old  Testament  woman  heeding  Thou  Shalt  Not 
more  than  Thou  Shalt.  The  reading  of  each  night 
provided  her  with  material  for  the  writing  of  each  day. 

Jamie  had  to  post  her  letters  with  his  own.  He  was 
conscious  of  a  strain  between  his  mother  and  himself 
and  fancied  that  her  letters  were  her  means  of  relief 
from  it.  She  was  absorbed  in  her  own  conscience- 
stricken  thoughts,  and  he  took  this  absorption  to  be  an 
instinctive  withdrawal  from  himself.  He  suffered  be- 
cause he  was  conscious  of  failure.  The  house,  with 
Tom  gone  from  it,  seemed  too  big,  even  pretentious. 
His  clearest  and  dearest  idea  of  Margaret  was  in  the 
little  house  in  Kirkcudbright.  There  she  was  in  her 
right  setting,  struggling,  fighting,  filling  all  that  place 
with  her  spirit.  But  now  there  was  no  fight  in  her.  She 
resented  the  disaster  to  John,  she  was  bitter  and  venge- 
ful, and  she  avenged  herself  on  both  Jamie  and  Tibby. 
They  had  dreadful  days  but  neither  let  the  other  suspect 
the  pain  they  were  suffering.  Neither  could  help  Mar- 
garet. All  her  thought  was  for  Tom.  He  must  repair 
the  disaster,  must  send  for  John  and  take  him  into  the 
firm. 


332  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

When  Tom  returned  from  his  honeymoon,  which 
business  extended  from  London  to  Lille  with  a  journey 
through  the  north  of  France,  she  went  to  see  him,  then 
to  stay  with  him,  and  every  night  he  had  to  listen  to 
his  mother's  argument.  He  must  send  John  money. 
He  pointed  out  that  Sophia  had  money. — "Then  she  can 
put  that  into  the  firm  for  John." — "But,  my  good  mother, 
I  have  my  partners  to  think  of  and  business  is  not  what 
it  was  for  the  old  firm." — »"But  trade  does  not  stand 
still." — "No.  The  markets  grow  as  new  people  come 
into  the  trade,  and  new  people  mean  new  methods." — 
"Then  what  is  John  to  do?"— "That  is  John's  affair. 
He  knows  better  than  we  do  the  openings  out  there." 
— "Then  you  refuse  to  help  your  own  brother?" — "It 
is  not  a  question  of  refusing,  it  is  a  question  of  inability. 
Business  is  not  what  it  was.  The  old  personal  relations 
are  gone  and  there  is  no  longer  room  for  a  man  merely 
because  he  is  your  brother  or  your  friend." — "But  you 
can  make  room.  Your  family  comes  first." — '"No,  my 
dear  mother,  the  firm  comes  first.  As  a  public-spirited 
man,  the  firm  comes  first.  If  it  is  a  matter  of  helping 
John  over  a  difficult  period,  well  and  good,  though  you 
should  remember  that  he  has  brought  his  misfortunes 
upon  himself.  We  all  had  equal  chances.  I  am  sorry 
that  he  has  not  used  his  better." 

Margaret  returned  home  and  did  not  again  ask  Jamie 
to  read  the  Bible.  She  sat,  lost  in  thought,  with  an 
expression  of  bewilderment  upon  her  face.  She  was  not 
hurt,  but  simply  puzzled.  Her  innocent  faith  in  her 
original  plan  was  shocked  but  by  no  means  destroyed. 
She  was  still  unaware  of  the  lack  of  faith  in  Tom.  It 
was  true,  what  he  had  said,  that  John  had  brought  his 
misfortunes  upon  himself  and  she  had  failed  in  not 
asserting  her  authority.  But  that  was  not  altogether 


NEWS  FROM  JOHN  333 

her  fault,  but  was  due  in  part  to  her  tragedy  and  her 
presumption  in  dreaming  that,  once  in  Thrigsby,  An- 
drew Keith,  that  great  man,  would  be  a  father  to  her 
sons.  She  had  been  blind,  and  lacking  in  common-sense. 
Of  course  Andrew  could  not  acknowledge  them  or  help 
them  until  they  had  proved  themselves.  Tom  had 
proved  himself.  The  others  had  been  headstrong.  They 
had  failed.  She  looked  sullenly  upon  Jamie.  He  had 
been  a  bad  example  for  John. 

As  for  Jamie,  he  had  taken  refuge,  as  so  many  times 
before,  behind  the  written  word,  discovering  a  new  liter- 
ary delight  in  the  Bible,  and,  saturating  himself  in  it, 
he  had  passed  on  to  Paradise  Lost,  which  he  had  never 
before  been  able  to  read.  Now  he  perceived  its  beauty, 
the  nobility  of  its  architecture,  and  it  contained  for  him 
the  truth  of  the  life  against  which  he  was  in  revolt. 
The  God  of  the  poem  seemed  to  him  abominable,  but 
he  recognised  him  as  the  God  of  his  mother.  He  was 
by  now  a  thorough-going  evolutionist  and  saw — (not 
very  clearly  for  he  was  an  undisciplined  thinker,  depend- 
ent upon  fierce  and  often  blasting  flashes  of  light) — 
that  the  Gods  also  are  evolved  by  man  and  perish  as 
from  man  they  grow  more  remote.  The  God  of  the 
poem  was  an  egoist  without  grace,  whereas  Adam  and 
one  or  two  of  the  angels  were  in  grace.  It  seemed  to 
him  then  that  Milton  had  penetrated  in  the  mystery  of 
human  nature  only  to  the  angelic  sphere,  and  had  not 
touched  the  Godhead,  and  there  he  fell  behind  Shake- 
speare whose  very  thieves,  pimps  and  bawds  were  in 
their  motions  God-like,  with  dignity  and  laughter. 
There  was  more  God  in  Falstaff  than  in  Milton's  Je- 
hovah whose  greatness  was  too  much  asserted,  too  little 
revealed,  and  yet  how  moving  and  how  beautiful  was 


334 


the  wedded  love  of  Adam  and  the  Mother  of  Mankind, 
how  noble  and  how  sweet  the  love  of  the  angels: 

"Whatever  pure  thou  in  the  body  enjoy'st 
(And  pure  thou  wert  created)  we  enjoy 
In  eminence,  and  obstacle  find  none 
Of  membrane,  joint  or  limb,  exclusive  bars. 
Easier  than  air  with  air,  if  Spirits  embrace, 
Total  they  mix,  union  of  pure  with  pure 
Desiring,  nor  restrained  conveyance  need 
As  flesh  to  mix  with  flesh,  or  soul  with  soul." 

The  angelic,  he  saw,  was  but  a  condition  of  the  spirit 
of  man,  yet  lower  than  the  highest,  lacking  the  true  grace 
without  which  the  fullness  of  love  is  not.  That  only 
could  be  known  to  the  human  spirit  in  its  highest  flight 
whose  pure  and  serene  joy  man  had  mistakenly  called 
God.  God  must  be  beyond  that  joy  which  is  in  the 
approach  to  Him,  the  all-living  and  unceasing  creator 
and  destroyer,  the  supreme  Being  in  whom  all  is. 

In  such  thoughts  Jamie  had  his  highest  joy.  When 
he  turned  from  them  to  life  he  was  shocked  by  the 
discrepancy,  and  enraged  by  his  inability  to  confirm 
his  thoughts.  By  his  daily  life  they  seemed  to  be  de- 
nied. No  word  did  he  ever  hear  spoken  that  could  en- 
dorse them,  and  against  his  will  he  was  driven  into 
isolation.  The  real  solitude  of  his  soul  he  could  accept, 
but  apparent  solitude,  lack  of  cohesion  with  his  fellows 
was  a  denial,  was  an  infringement  of  it.  Yet  he  lacked 
the  strength  to  save  himself,  for  he  had  no  power  to 
concentrate  and  clarify  his  vision.  His  weakness  lay 
in  that,  if  he  was  amused,  he  was  content.  If  he  was 
not  amused  then  he  would  take  refuge  in  some  game, 
mental  or  emotional,  or,  in  his  worst  condition,  he  would 


NEWS  FROM  JOHN  335 

resort  to  the  trick  of  letting  his  thoughts  and  emotions 
play  hide  and  seek  with  each  other.  He  would  often 
marvel  at  the  apparent  simplicity  of  those  about  him, 
and  wonder  why,  if  they  were  spared,  as  they  seemed 
to  be,  the  tortures  through  which  he  struggled,  they  were 
not  more  amiable,  and  why  there  appeared  such  a  lack 
of  purpose  in  all  their  doings.  They  were  all  busy  in 
the  creation  of  Thrigsby.  Why,  then,  if  they  were  so 
simple,  and  straightforward,  did  they  not  create  it  bet- 
ter? Why  did  they  accept  the  making  of  money  as  good 
evidence  that  they  were  doing  well  enough  ? 

His  mind,  it  is  to  be  observed,  had  become,  for  better 
or  worse,  critical.  Those  processes  of  the  intelligence 
which  he  had  acquired  in  the  theatre  he  had  begun  to 
exercise  upon  life  and  upon  himself.  He  was  unusual 
only  in  that  he  had  more  humour  for  the  contemplation 
of  himself  than  for  his  consideration  of  life,  which  he 
was  apt  to  regard  as  though  it  were  a  play,  a  creation  by 
familiar  and  discoverable  machinery.  Forced  by  his  de- 
velopment and  the  spirit  of  his  time  to  discard  the  cur- 
rent forms  of  religion,  as  representing  a  metaphysic  no 
longer  valid,  he  performed  the  act  of  rejection  so  vio- 
lently as  to  leave  himself  exhausted  and  almost  unaware 
of  his  need  for  a  religion.  And  he  looked  for  it  in 
the  acts  and  practices  of  everyday  life,  and,  naturally, 
he  looked  in  vain.  Though  he  could  understand  per- 
fectly his  mother's  anxiety  over  John,  and  even  her  self- 
castigation,  he  could  not  help  being  impatient  with  her, 
and,  helplessly,  he  saw  the  gulf  between  himself  and 
her  widening.  His  high  hopes  of  a  greater  freedom 
in  Tom's  absence  were  dashed  to  the  ground.  Margaret 
became  Tommish  and  assumed  the  headship  of  the 
household,  dictating  the  time  for  bed  in  the  evening  and 


336  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

claiming  the  first  sight  of  the  newspaper  in  the  morn- 
ing. 

At  length,  in  exasperation,  and  by  way  of  asserting 
himself,  Jamie  brought  down  from  the  landing  the  por- 
traits of  Goethe  and  Jean  Paul  and  hung  them  in  the 
dining-room  on  either  side  of  the  portrait  of  his  father. 
He  did  this  one  night  after  his  mother  had  gone  to  bed. 
When  he  came  down  in  the  morning  the  pictures  were 
removed.  He  could  not  let  it  pass  and  said :  "I  thought 
now  that  Tom  is  gone  that  I  would  use  the  dining-room 
for  my  study." — "If  I  am  to  eat  in  this  room,"  answered 
Margaret,  "it  will  not  be  beneath  those  heathen  Ger- 
mans." 

There  were  other  differences,  over  food,  over  the 
place  of  the  lamp  in  the  drawing-room  at  night,  over 
his  intolerance  of  an  antimacassar  on  his  chair,  but,  in 
spite  of  these,  perhaps  because  of  them,  he  discerned 
slowly  and  over  many  days  a  new  beauty  in  his  mother. 
She  seemed  definitely  shaped  and  fixed  in  type — Milton- 
ian  he  called  her,  having  amused  himself  with  dividing 
his  friends  and  acquaintances  into  Miltonians,  Shake- 
speareans  and  neuters.  Her  costume  had  become  fixed, 
black  with  white  collar  and  bands,  with  soft  linen  cuffs 
at  her  wrists.  Her  skirts  were  full,  her  bodice  tight 
and  unadorned.  Upon  her  grey  hair  she  wore  a  spot- 
less white  mutch  with  wings  that  swung  out  behind  her 
as  she  walked.  With  a  rare  dignity  she  walked,  very 
erect,  with  her  head  a  little  bowed  as  though  she  were 
continually  acknowledging  herself  to  be  the  servant  of 
powers  greater  than  herself.  Very  silent  was  her  tread 
so  that  it  was  almost  terrifying  when  she  came  into  a 
room.  Not  even  a  rustle  of  her  wide  skirts  announced 
her  coming.  The  whole  personality  of  the  woman  was 
immediately  there  to  be  faced  and  reckoned  with.  Jamie 


NEWS  FROM  JOHN  337 

could  neither  face  nor  reckon  with  her.  For  him  she 
had  gained  most  awfully  in  power.  This  it  was  that 
forced  him  to  see  her  beauty  and  behind  it  her  hostility. 

Often  he  endeavoured  to  assert  himself.  Sometimes 
he  would  try  to  win  her  support  for  what  he  most 
cherished  in  her  doings,  but  his  attempts  were  futile. 
That  he  held  a  good  position  in  the  bank  was  her  sole 
satisfaction  in  him.  All  else  that  he  did,  every  friend- 
ship that  he  made,  she  ignored.  He  felt  that  she  was 
alarmed  for  him.  She  watched  over  him  and  deep  in 
her  inmost  tenderness  she  was  fearful  and  hungry  for 
him.  He  had  already  betrayed  the  family  in  his  en- 
couragement of  John.  What  next  would  he  do? — She 
did  not  see  that  Tom  also  had  betrayed  the  family  to 
industrialism.  How  then  could  she  see  that  her  eldest 
son,  partly  because  of  this  betrayal,  but  most  because 
of  his  hatred  of  all  tyranny  and  his  passionate  but  still 
unconscious  desire  to  reconcile  the  responsibility  of 
human  love  with  freedom,  was,  in  his  turn,  revolted 
against  industrialism  and  bent  upon  betraying  it  ?  She 
was  unhappy,  knew  not  the  cause,  and  was  hardened  in 
her  pride. 

Sometimes  for  days  together  she  would  hardly  speak 
and  would  be  busy  in  the  household  or  with  charitable 
works.  Her  shadow  filled  all  the  house.  Jamie  and 
Tibby  would  creep  together  in  the  dining-room  or  the 
kitchen,  and  whisper  strangely,  hardly  knowing  what 
they  said,  each  imploring  the  other  to  invent  some  way 
to  distract  Margaret  from  her  brooding.  Neither  could 
think  of  any  way.  Tibby  would  excel  herself  in  cook- 
ing, Jamie  would  bring  home  flowers,  but  they  could 
win  neither  gracious  word  nor  smile. — "You'd  think  all 
her  heart  was  out  with  John,"  said  Tibby  one  night. 
— '"Oh!  Tibby,  I  sometimes  think  her  heart  must  be  in 


338  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  grave." — "She's  a  living  woman. ''--"But  never 
meant  to  live  in  a  place  like  this,"  said  Jamie,  "or  in 
times  like  this." — "Is  there  ought  wrong  with  the  times  ?" 
— "Aye,"  said  he,  "men  have  seen  themselves  as  mon- 
keys."— Tibby  whispered:  "Not  you,  Jamie."--Then 
he  found  her  hands  in  his  and  himself  gazing  down  into 
her  gaunt  ugly  face. — "I  see  your  hair's  grown  well 
again,  Tibby.  She  took  that  off  your  head."  "It  was 
for  Maggie,"  said  she,  "and  I  owed  more  than  that  to 
the  family."  She  smiled  up  at  him  and  they  felt  rather 
foolish,  she  in  her  soiled  cooking-apron  with  the  grime 
of  the  kitchen  still  on  her  cheeks,  and  he  in  his  fine 
broadcloth.  And  behind  them  suddenly  appeared  Mar- 
garet holding  a  letter  in  her  hand  and  crying:  "Jamie! 
Jamie!  There's  word  from  John.  He's  coming  home!" 

Tibby  slipped  away.  Margaret  came  to  her  son  and 
took  his  face  in  her  hands  and  kissed  him.  Her  cheeks 
were  flushed,  her  breathing  came  heavily.  She  had 
been  weeping. — "Oh!  Jamie,"  she  said,  "my  prayers 
have  been  answered.  He  is  coming  home !  He  is  rich!" 

Jamie  read  the  letter.  It  was  a  song  of  triumph  from 
John.  Immediately  on  receipt  of  the  news  from  Mur- 
doch's, he  had  bought  the  Australian  stock.  There  had 
been  a  gold  rush.  He  had  had  a  share  in  a  corner  in 
corrugated  iron,  was  now  realising  the  profits  which 
would  amount  to  many  thousands  of  pounds.  As  soon 
as  he  had  put  his  affairs  in  order  he  proposed  to  return 
home  there  to  enter  politics,  or,  if  his  health  made  that 
impossible,  to  study  the  principles  of  political  economy 
and  to  prepare  his  sons  for  the  career  which  had  been 
denied  himself.  And  he  remained  his  mother's  affec- 
tionate and  obedient  son. 

Jamie  folded  the  letter  up:     "That's  Tom  and  John, 


NEWS  FROM  JOHN  339 

mother.  You  should  be  a  proud  woman." — "I  am  that," 
said  she. — "Then  bide  your  time  for  me,"  he  said,  and 
to  his  astonishment  she  touched  his  arm  affectionately 
and  replied.1 — "No.  You  mustn't  go  yet  awhile." — 
"I'll  wait  till  John  comes  home  with  his  riches,"  said 
he.  "We'll  see  what  riches  and  a  travelled  mind  will 
do  for  us.  If  a  letter  from  John  can  bring  back  the 
spirit  in  us,  think  what  John  himself  might  do.  John 
standing  there,  where  Tom  used  to  stand,  by  the  fire- 
place, and  talking  canny  wisdom.  Ech!  If  John  had 
kept  his  pair  of  lungs  he  would  have  talked  his  way  until 
he'd  go  before  the  Queen  next  but  one  to  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury."  — •  Margaret  smiled  reprovingly :  — 
"We're  not  a  talking  family,"  she  said.  "Will  you  come 
now  and  read  John's  letter  aloud  to  me?  I  want  to 
hear  it." 

He  followed  her  to  the  drawing-room  where  she  sat 
in  her  chair  by  the  fireplace  and  he  read  aloud  John's 
letter.  When  he  had  finished  he  had  to  begin  all  over 
again.  Then  he  promised  that  the  next  day  she  should 
come  and  fetch  him  from  the  bank  and  they  would 
both  go  out  to  tell  Tom  the  news. — "I  don't  think,"  said 
Jamie,  "that  I  should  tell  Tom  that  John  is  rich  until 
we  know  how  rich.  It  would  worry  him." — Margaret 
saw  the  fun  of  the  remark  and  replied:  "But  we  will 
tell  him."  And  she  added,  folding  her  hands:  "Do 
you  know,  I  feel  like  the  mother  of  Tobias  in  the  Apo- 
crypha."— "My  dear  mother,"  said  Jamie,  "I  often  feel 
that  you  are  like  all  the  mothers  in  the  Bible." — "There 
are  very  few,"  said  she,  and  Jamie,  who  had  begun  to 
be  a  little  sentimental  about  the  mothers  in  the  Bible, 
was  shocked  into  an  appreciation  of  his  mother's  sense 
of  fact.  She  liked  success  because  it  was  a  goodly  fact, 


340  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

whereas  he  disliked  facts  whenever  they  loomed  so  large 
as  to  obscure  reality.  This  success  of  John's  had  in 
truth  rather  distressed  him  and  the  best  way  to  be  rid 
of  it  would  be  to  present  it  to  Tom. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

MORLEY    STREET    TRANSFIGURED 


THE  patient  and  careful  reader,  if  patient  and  care- 
ful writing  have  led  him  so  far,  will  remember  a 
panegyric,  which  like  a  peal  of  trumpets  hailed  the  ar- 
rival of  James  Lawrie  in  Morley  Street,  that  noble  ex- 
pression of  Thrigsby's  early  dignity  when  merchants  had 
the  air  of  diplomatists  and  bankers  cherished  the  future 
of  England  as  impressively  as  statesmen  guard  her 
present.  Magnificent  though  that  expression  was  it 
failed  to  satisfy  a  younger  generation  possessed  by  the 
idea  that  nothing  could  express  importance  but  size. 
Factories  and  warehouses  no  longer  expanded  economi- 
cally to  meet  needs.  They  must  be  enlarged  by  the 
thousand  thousand  cubic  feet.  The  boundless  expansion 
of  trade  would  fill  them.  Thrigsby  possessed  in  the 
John  Bright  Hall  the  largest  place  of  public  assembly 
in  the  north  of  England.  The  Town  Hall  had  been 
added  to.  The  Cotton  Exchange  had  been  rebuilt.  A 
great  house  in  Morley  Street  had  been  converted  into 
an  art  gallery.  The  German  colony  had  caused  the 
erection  in  the  Derby  Road  of  a  Gentleman's  Concert 
Hall  where  could  be  heard  the  sweetest  music  in  all  Eng- 
land. The  Thrigsbeians  did  not  go  to  hear  it  but  they 
boasted  of  it.  They  liked  brass  bands  and  they  got 
them  in  the  Victoria  Gardens  and  Zoological  Collection. 
If  there  was  to  be  a  noise,  let  there  be  much  noise; 

341 


THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 


if  money,  then  much  money;  if  bricks  and  mortar,  then 
much  bricks  and  mortar.  Happy  Thrigsby,  to  desire 
only  that  which  can  be  easily  expressed,  to  aim  only  at 
that  which  can  be  lightly  won,  to  have  so  constant  a 
stream  of  success  that  there  shall  never  be  the  shadow 
of  a  thought  of  the  cost  of  it!  Happy,  happy  Thrigsby 
to  call  in  from  the  country-side  new,  abundant  and  eager 
life  and  to  have,  when  that  is  used  up,  coming  in  from 
the  country-side,  life  eager,  new  and  abundant!  To 
use  up  human  life  in  the  creation  of  trade,  to  be  able  in 
so  doing  to  destroy  beauty,  to  ignore  love,  and  the  joy 
of  little  children!  Thrigsbeians  were  very  happy  then 
in  the  erection  of  enormous  buildings,  with  every  two 
miles  or  so  a  little  church  just  to  assure  themselves  that, 
though  they  really  preferred  the  places  in  which  they 
spent  their  weekdays,  they  had  not  forgotten  the  God  of 
their  fathers.  Yet,  somehow,  their  churches  all  looked 
rather  casual,  for  they  were  built  on  plots  of  land  which 
had  been  forgotten,  or  through  some  close-fisted  dealing 
had  been  left  until  they  were  useless  for  any  other  pur- 
pose, or  by  some  evil  proximity  had  been  made  cheap. 
The  Low  Churches  had  the  best  of  it  because  they  had 
most  adherents  and  the  few  High  Churches  had  to  be 
built  on  slag-heaps  or  marches.  Chapels  seemed  to  be 
much  more  at  home  among  the  warehouses  and  in  the 
streets  of  little  houses,  for  those  who  frequented  them 
assumed  (or  so  their  frankness  would  lead  one  to  sup- 
pose) that  God  did  not  mind  a  little  ugliness  more  or 
less.  But  the  massive  banks  could  redeem  the  poorness 
of  the  churches.  There  are  High  and  Low  in  banks 
also,  and  the  Thrigsby  and  District  was  distinctly  Low. 
Cateaton's  was  the  bank  of  Thrigsby's  representative 
men  :  the  T.  &  D.  that  of  the  Thrigsby  which  they  rep- 
resented, and  the  representative  men  were  puzzled  that 


MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED  343 

Thrigsby  should  need  a  bank.  The  city  was  their  crea- 
tion, it  existed  in  order  to  be  represented  by  them.  It 
ought  not  to  develop  institutions  without  consulting 
them.  They  were  broad-minded.  Did  they  not  believe 
in  laissez  fairef  They  could  admit  the  right  of  disrepu- 
table things,  such  as  anarchy,  Roman  Catholicism,  and 
Irish  Nationalism  to  exist  and  find  public  expression,  but 
they  could  not  admit  of  any  other  respectability  and 
prosperity  than  that  for  which  they  stood.  When  there- 
fore the  T.  &  D.  built  itself  an  enormous  Florentine  pal- 
ace with  little  windows  strongly  barred  and  a  vast  door 
wide  enough  and  tall  enough  to  admit  the  train  of  ele- 
phants of  an  Indian  rajah,  Cateaton's  went  one  better, 
bought  a  whole  row  of  houses  opposite  their  premises 
in  Morley  Street,  pulled  them  down  and  put  up  a  Gre- 
cian structure,  with  fluted  pillars  and  enormous  plate- 
glass  windows,  as  to  show  that  the  power  of  Cateaton's 
lay  in  something  more  than  the  mere  hoarding  of  cash, 
and  the  door  was  made  so  that,  but  for  the  steps  leading 
up  to  it,  it  could  have  admitted  the  Lord  Mayor's  coach. 
This  pile  was  severe  and,  in  intention,  dignified,  a  re- 
proach to  the  vulgarity  of  the  T.  &  D.  It  was  the  last 
triumph  of  Mr.  Rigby  Blair,  for  before  the  glass  was 
put  into  the  windows,  and  the  brass  fittings  were  sup- 
plied for  the  great  general  office,  he  was  laid  low  with 
a  stroke,  and  was  never  the  same  man  again.  He  re- 
covered and  struggled  back  to  his  work  but  the  general 
feeling  was  that  he  must  retire,  and  Jamie,  who  had  been 
for  some  years  his  chief  lieutenant,  became  his  captain, 
consulting  him  after  instead  of  before  the  event. 

At  the  top  of  Cateaton's  new  building  was  a  house  for 
the  manager  where  Mr.  Rigby  Blair  hoped  seraphically 
to  dwell.  He  was  a  hospitable  little  creature  and  all 
the  thought  he  could  spare  from  the  circulation  of  cash 


344  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

and  credit  and  the  behaviour  of  the  money  market  was 
devoted  to  the  house-warming,  or  rather  the  house- 
warmings  he  would  give;  one  for  men  and  potations, 
and  one  for  ladies  and  polite  entertainment.  When  he 
was  stricken  and  Jamie  had  to  go  and  see  him  every 
day  he  would  talk  of  little  but  the  new  building  and  his 
house-warming  and  he  wondered  whether  it  would  be 
beneath  the  dignity  of  Cateaton's  to  have  something 
really  convivial,  and  he  even  hinted  that  Jamie  should 
introduce  some  of  "the  Bohemians,"  beings  who,  to  Mr. 
Blair,  lived  in  another  and  a  nether  world.  They  de- 
cided that  if  it  was  to  be  "staff,"  then  the  Bohemians 
could  be  admitted,  but  that,  if  the  Directors  were  to  be 
invited,  then  the  Bohemians  could  not  come  unless  it 
were  professionally,  to  sing,  recite  and  make  music. 
Clearly  the  little  man  was  hoping  for  some  dedication 
with  delight  of  the  crown  of  his  life  work.  He  had 
given  the  bank  an  entity,  whereas  in  the  old  days  it  had 
been  merely  the  instrument  of  Elias  Cateaton,  to  whom 
it  had  been  nothing  compared  with  his  own  reputation. 
To  Jamie  on  the  other  hand  it  was  merely  the  means  of 
getting  his  bread  and  butter  and  as  he  sat  talking  to  his 
chief  he  wondered  how  far  the  little  man  suspected  him, 
deciding  finally  that  Mr.  Blair  was  incapable  of  imagin- 
ing any  such  thing.  It  would  have  been  blasphemy  to 
him  and  that  being  so  there  was  an  irony,  which  Jamie 
did  not  fail  to  appreciate,  in  his  being  marked  out  to 
succeed  to  the  managership  and  the  house  above  the 
new  head  office. 

When  Margaret  called  for  him  on  the  day  after  the 
receipt  of  John's  news  he  took  her  to  see  the  new  prem- 
ises, where  a  horde  of  workpeople  were  hurrying  to 
catch  up  the  time  lost  by  the  contractors.  They  en- 
tered through  the  vast  doors,  and  pushed  open  the  new 


MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED          345 

swing  doors  leading  to  the  vestibule  by  the  counter.  Be- 
hind this  were  rows  upon  rows  of  desks,  each  with  a 
brass  rail  and  a  green  lamp. — "It  is  enormous,"  said 
Margaret;  "you'll  feel  lost  in  it." — "I  do,"  said  Jamie. 
"It's  so  impressive  that  I  shrivel  up  in  it.  It  frightens 
me  to  think  that  I  might  one  day  be  manager  of  all  this, 
seeing  to  it  that  not  a  penny  goes  through  the  place 
without  earning  its  little  bit  of  interest." — That  was 
beyond  Margaret  to  whom  money  was  still  a  miracle  be- 
yond the  understanding  of  man. 

He  took  her  to  see  the  Board-room  and  the  Man- 
ager's parlour  where  he  would  one  day  sit  and  advise 
shrewd  men  and  anxious  ladies  about  their  investments 
and  agree  to  loans  on  good  tangible  security,  honesty 
being  no  longer  security  enough,  or  rather  the  bank, 
unlike  Elias  Cateaton,  being  no  judge  of  honesty.  He 
showed  her  the  drawers  where  the  gold  would  be  kept, 
and  the  labyrinth  of  strong-rooms,  some  of  them  al- 
ready in  use.  In  one  there  were  many  bags  of  gold  and 
Margaret  was  tremendously  impressed,  and  put  on  the 
expression  she  wore  in  church,  so  that  Jamie  felt  con- 
firmed in  his  old  notion  that  there  was  some  kind  of 
God  dwelling  in  the  bank,  a  conception  which  could 
exercise  tyranny  over  the  human  mind  and  impede  its 
fine  apprehension  of  life.  The  combination  of  his 
mother  and  the  bank  roused  the  rebellious  instinct  in 
him  as  it  had  not  been  roused  for  many  a  long  day. 
She  so  perfectly  approved  and  bowed  down  before  this 
vast  machinery  which  seemed  to  him  excessive  and  os- 
tentatious, horribly  impersonal  and  therefore  dangerous, 
a  useful  abstraction  become  concrete  and  a  burden.  The 
strong-rooms  were  like  catacombs  to  him  and  he  felt 
stifled.  He  hurried  Margaret  away  and  they  climbed 
up  many  stairs  to  the  manager's  "house." — "I  should 


346  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

have  to  live  here,"  he  said,  "if  I  were  made  manager. 
Would  you  come  too?" — '"You  would  have  a  wife  then, 
I  hope,"  said  Margaret. — "Not  I.  I'm  well  enough  with 
you  and  Tibby." — He  could  not  say  what  he  was  feel- 
ing, how  it  disgusted  him  to  think  of  bringing  a  young 
bride  to  dwell  in  such  a  place,  what  a  desecration  it 
would  be,  the  offering  up  of  love  and  wedded  bliss  and 
the  lovely  mystery  of  birth  to  money.  As  they  wan- 
dered through  the  rooms  and  Margaret  criticised  their 
disposition  he  could  not  away  with  the  idea.  It  might 
be  his  fate  to  be  swallowed  up  by  Mr.  Blair's  machine 
but  he  would  not  drag  after  him  the  fairest  beauty  in 
life.  His  heart  was  heavy  but  he  had  one  of  those  ex- 
tremely pleasant  moments  when  a  man  has  the  illusion 
of  seeing  the  future  before  him  and  of  facing  it,  though 
he  likes  it  but  little,  with  a  proud  determination.  In 
short  our  James  saw  himself  living,  a  chosen  celibate,  in 
the  blessed  apartments  designed  by  the  Cherub  for  him- 
self above  his  temple. 

Margaret,  on  her  side,  had  begun  to  think  better  of 
her  eldest  son.  Nothing  in  Tom's  place  of  business  had 
impressed  her  so  much  as  the  strong-rooms.  Tom's 
office  was,  after  all,  more  than  a  little  squalid,  and  it 
was  impossible  to  see  at  a  glance  what  was  being  done 
there  or  what  it  stood  for.  She  understood  better 
Jamie's  malicious  pleasure  in  John's  success,  and  she 
began  to  share  it,  and  to  cast  about  in  her  mind  for 
ways  of  playing  with  Tom,  the  indubitably  and  tradition- 
ally successful.  She  had  her  share,  though  in  a  very 
small  proportion,  of  the  sardonic  Keith  humour,  and  as 
they  left  the  bank  she  had  a  pleasant  and  unusual  sen- 
sation of  being  at  one  with  James,  the  moody,  the  ob- 
stinate, and  the  perverse.  She  was  pleased  with  him  for 
showing  her  over  the  new  bank,  for  she  imagined  that 


MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED          347 

he  had  done  so  out  of  pride.  She  could  approve  of  that 
and  forget  the  idea  with  which  she  had  so  long  com- 
forted herself  that  he  was  unhappy  and  in  his  heart 
sorry  for  the  day  when  he  had  left  Keith's  mill.  Al- 
most she  began  to  feel  that  she  had  humbled  herself 
unduly  before  the  Keiths  who  had  never  treated  her  well. 
The  Lawries  had  been  well  able  to  take  care  of  them- 
selves. Then  as  they  walked  away  from  the  bank  a  hor- 
rid thought  seized  her.  She  asked  Jamie :  "Would  a 
manager  be  a  kind  of  partner?" — He  assured  her,  no. 
A  manager  would  be  a  very  powerful  being  but  still  in 
receipt  of  a  salary.  That  dashed  her.  Real  success  in 
her  eyes  lay  beyond  salaries :  indeed,  it  began  where 
salaries  ended,  where  a  man  hovered  mysteriously  and 
awfully  above  a  business  and  accepted  its  profits  as  they 
exuded  from  it  in  a  cloud,  much  as  the  Papist  God  may 
be  assumed  to  accept  incense.  Your  truly  successful 
man  must  be  in  a  position  to  exact  homage  and  fear  as 
well  as  labour  and  money  from  those  beneath  him. — 
At  the  base  of  all  Margaret's  conceptions  was  the  no- 
tion of  tidiness,  of  keeping  everybody  in  his  place, 
with  herself  at  the  top:  not  that  she  was  at  all  a  conceited 
woman,  but  she  was  religious.  That  was  how  the  Lord 
behaved  and  that  was  how  she  thought  she,  who  dwelt 
in  the  Lord,  ought  to  behave.  The  success  of  her  sons 
left  her  free  to  imagine  that  she  was  doing  so.  It  was 
all  perfectly  clear  and  simple  to  her  because  she  could 
ignore  everything  that  contradicted  her  idea.  For  all 
that,  she  was  shrewd  and  quite  a  keen  critic  of  the  human 
comedy,  which,  when  it  did  not  threaten  her  programme 
for  her  earthly  and  divine  existence,  constantly  amused 
and  enlivened  her,  She  knew  the  ways  of  men  and 
women  with  each  other,  and,  had  Jamie  ever  consulted 
her,  she  could  have  enlightened  him,  startled  him  and 


348  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

done  him  a  world  of  good.  But  he  stood  in  too  great 
awe  of  her,  and,  merely  because  she  was  his  mother, 
imagined  that  there  were  certain  aspects  of  his  life  and 
of  life  generally  to  which  she  was  blind.  And  yet  both, 
had  they  been  friends,  could  have  shared  to  the  full  the 
comicality  of  things,  for  both  could  take  a  hearty  de- 
light in  the  humour  of  life  among  men  and  women  who 
have  lost  their  innocence  and  its  grace  so  that  vanity  has 
become  in  them  an  offensive  and  no  longer  a  defensive 
element  in  their  constitution.  Yet  because  they  had  al- 
ways lived  together  they  could  not  be  friends,  -but  were 
mother  and  son  sharing  nothing  but  the  habit  of  living 
and  their  profound  but  well-nigh  inarticulate  affection. 
They  were  not  even  aware  of  sharing  their  malicious 
joke  at  Tom's  expense,  but  felt  it  almost  strange  that 
they  should  be  going  to  Hill  House  together.  And  both, 
for  different  reasons,  were  shy  of  meeting  Agnes. 

Hill  House  lay  some  miles  away.  It  stood  on  a  green 
bank  rising  high  above  the  already  filthy  river.  It  had 
been  the  house  of  a  very  rich  man  and  had  lawns  and 
fruit  and  vegetable  gardens,  stabling  for  three  horses 
and  a  coach-house  with  a  handless  clock  above  it.  In 
the  front  it  had  ten  yards  of  drive  enclosed  with  laurels 
and  by  the  door  was  a  leaden  statue  of  a  naked  boy 
holding  a  lamp.  For  a  newly  married  couple  it  was  an 
absurdly  big  house  but  Tom  had  felt  that  he  could  not 
take  Agnes  to  anything  less,  or,  at  least,  that  to  a  smaller 
place  he  could  never  invite  Donald  Greig  to  dinner. 
Also,  through  a  friend,  he  had  got  it  cheap,  and  the 
landlord  had  agreed  to  paint  it  outside  and  in  before 
occupation,  also  every  five  years  to  paint  outside. 

Agnes  from  her  parlour  saw  her  relations-in-law  enter 
the  drive  and  she  was  not  above  opening  the  door  to 
them  herself.  When  she  did  that  Jamie  knew  that  Tom 


MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED          349 

was  not  at  home.  Though  he  had  not  often  been  to 
the  house  yet  he  knew  its  ways  and  how  intent  Tom  was 
on  the  observance  of  every  formality. 

The  house  had  that  curious  raw  emptiness  of  the 
houses  of  the  newly  married  who  have  not  yet  shaped 
their  belongings  to  their  character  or  indeed  their  char- 
acter to  their  new  life.  Agnes  was  rather  pathetic  there 
in  her  great  parlour  with  its  new  paint,  new  chintzes,  new 
furniture,  new  ornaments.  They  were  not  her  back- 
ground and  without  her  background,  for  Jamie  at  least, 
she  lost  in  beauty.  She  needed  the  lake.  It  had  been 
wonderful  to  him  to  look  from  her  eyes  out  over  to 
the  fells.  She  needed  the  collective  adoration  of  her 
family ;  that  most  of  all.  She  had  been  the  centre  of  all 
the  love  of  which  the  Greigs  were  capable,  and  to  re- 
place that  Tom  seemed  somehow  inadequate.  Jamie  was 
very  sensitive  to  the  rawness  and  the  emptiness  of  the 
house,  and,  as  usual,  unreasonably  making  staight  for  the 
affections,  he  scented  failure  there.  He  was  right,  of 
course,  and  with  anybody  else  he  would  have  been  as 
indulgent  as  his  mother,  who  knew  the  pain  of  early  mar- 
ried life  and  the  slippery  nature  of  its  happiness  and 
how  fond  couples  laboriously  build  up  a  store  of  mem- 
ories and  how  they  discover  means  of  communication 
and  how  they  are  quickly  bound  even  by  their  knowledge 
of  how  to  hurt  each  other.  Margaret  enjoyed  seeing 
anything  so  ordinary  and  human  going  on  in  Tom's  life, 
but  where  Agnes  was  concerned  Jamie's  humour  deserted 
him  and  he  could  not  bear  the  thought  of  failure.  Suf- 
fering she  might  have,  but  not  the  nagging  pain  of 
stupidity  and  lack  of  sympathy. 

Agnes  explained  that  Tom  had  some  meeting  but 
would  be  back  soon.  She  had  been  trying  the  effect  of 
the  Diirer  prints  over  her  mantelpiece.  She  had  had  a 


350  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

little  difficulty  with  Tom  because  of  his  absurd  objection 
to  Germans.  She  told  him  Diirer  was  a  Dutchman  and 
then  Tom  looked  him  up  in  the  Encyclopaedia.  (She 
wished  encyclopaedias  had  never  been  invented.)  It  was 
all  very  silly,  especially  as  Tom  had  given  her  the  pic- 
tures.— "He  didn't!"  cried  Jamie. — "Years  ago,"  said 
Agnes. — "But  I  sent  them  myself,"  said  he,  and  was 
sorry  at  once  that  he  had  spoken,  for  she  looked  so  hurt. 
She  understood  at  once  how  she  must  have  grieved  him 
and  made  matters  worse  by  pretending  to  ignore  it  and 
she  went  on  :  "But  I  insisted  on  them  being  hung  here." 
As  if  it  mattered  that  she  had  triumphed  over  her  hus- 
band: as  if  it  were  not  shameful  that  she  should  need 
to  triumph !  Down  with  a  crash  came  Jamie's  year-long 
idealisation  of  her,  and  all  his  power  of  resistance  was 
swept  away  and  he  was  forced  to  face  the  fact  that 
Agnes  was  mated  with  his  brother  through  some  fitness 
in  herself,  through  her  own  will  to  surrender,  finally, 
that,  whether  she  knew  it  or  not,  she  had  surrendered. 
There  swept  through  him  a  cold  wave  of  emotional  per- 
ception in  which  he  saw  marriage  as  a  refuge  into  which 
men  and  women  creep  away  from  the  threatening  storms 
of  their  existence.  For  a  moment  he  had  a  sick  sense 
that  he  was  prying  into  the  affairs  of  others,  but  that 
he  flung  away.  This  perception  had  been  surprised  in 
him.  It  had  given  him  valuable  knowledge,  stripped 
him  of  foolish  illusions  concerning  Agnes  and  only 
warmed  his  affection  for  her,  while  at  the  same  time  it 
had  given  him  back  some  respect  for  his  brother,  since 
he  was  compelled  to  see  that  the  marriage  was  not  only 
a  matter  of  calculating  ambition.  If  marriage  were 
the  refuge  of  weakness  it  was  none  the  less  profound  for 
that,  though  it  meant  confinement  instead  of  release.  But 
how  much  of  good  humanity  must  perish  in  confinement! 


MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED          351 

How  much  already  of  the  beauty  in  Agnes  was  withered 
away.  Some  of  the  rawness,  some  of  the  emptiness  of 
the  new  house  was  permanent.  It  was  designed  to  keep 
out  the  strength  and  the  joy  that  alone  could  entirely 
fill  it,  and  much  though  he  often  hated  his  own  home 
Jamie  preferred  that  to  this.  His  mother  seemed  to 
him  a  finer  creature  than  Agnes.  A  part  at  least  of  her 
nature  had  been  fulfilled. 

He  had  created  a  strain  and  to  break  it  Agnes  sat  at 
her  new  piano  and  sang.  She  had  a  very  sweet  voice 
but  the  songs  she  sang  were  sentimental  and  most  grimly 
appropriate,  the  soft  sighing  after  emotions  that  had 
for  ever  become  impossible,  or,  most  vilely,  a  pretty  imi- 
tation of  them.  Jamie's  blood  ran  cold.  He  understood 
then  so  much  of  what  he  most  hated  in  Thrigsby,  in  the 
thoughts  and  the  writings  of  his  contemporaries.  "Have 
done!"  he  raged  within  himself.  "Have  done!  If  it  is 
your  will  to  deny  your  feelings  and  your  deep  desires 
then  have  done  with  them,  leave  them  to  those  who  have 
more  courage  than  yourselves." — But  Margaret  praised 
Agnes'  singing  and  thought  it  very  pretty.  She  liked 
Tom's  house.  It  was  not  so  very  much  smaller  than 
Clibran  Hall  and  Agnes  was  just  the  charming  accom- 
plished wife  it  needed.  She  would  have  been  glad  had 
Agnes  been  no  more  than  that  but  she  too  had  her 
qualms  about  the  marriage.  Tom  in  his  own  queer  way 
was  devoted  to  his  wife,  and  Margaret  knew  that  she 
had  been  replaced  in  his  thoughts,  too  easily  replaced 
and  by  something  that  in  her  heart  of  hearts  she  de- 
spised. Her  own  marriage  had  been  deeply  satisfying 
to  her  strong  nature,  always  a  wonderful  astonishment 
that  in  the  weak  sensitive  man  of  her  choice  there  had 
been  a  joy  stronger  a  thousand  times  than  her  strength. 
It  had  seemed  to  her  so  unique  in  her  husband,  so  mys- 


352  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

teriously  his,  that  she  was  blind  to  it  in  all  else.  It 
had  been  strongest  in  him  when  he  came  to  her  for  pro- 
tection. She  looked  for  it  only  in  those  whom  she  could 
protect,  while  at  the  same  time  she  would  protect  only 
those  in  whom  she  found  his  peculiar  tender  weakness. 
Where  there  was  any  strength  she  was  indifferent  for  her 
widowhood  had  led  her  to  believe  self-reliance  all-suf- 
ficent.  She  as  well  as  Jamie  knew  that  Agnes  had  failed 
in  self-reliance,  and  therefore  it  had  hurt  her  so  easily 
to  be  replaced. 

Tom  was  not  long  in  returning.  He  came  in  in  the 
middle  of  a  song.  Agnes  stopped  at  once  and  went  to 
him,  seeming  to  wait  upon  his  mood.  It  was  a  bad  one 
and  she  wilted. — "Did  you  have  a  good  meeting?"-  -"No. 
Bad." — "I'm  sorry.  Jamie  and  mother  came  in." — "So 
I  see.  How  are  you,  mother?" — "I'm  well,"  said  Mar- 
garet. "We've  had  news  of  John."— "Oh!  Is  he  well? 
And  how's  Sophia  ?"—" All  well."— "I  suppose  he's  not 
such  a  fool  as  to  be  coming  home.  England's  not  a 
fit  country  to  live  in  since  the  Crimean  War." — "Why?" 
asked  Jamie.  "Trade's  never  been  better." — "Just  the 
point,"  said  Tom.  "What's  to  become  of  agriculture? 
No  one  knows  where  we  are  or  what  we  are.  Some 
people  say  we're  an  Empire,  other  people  say  we're  a 
free,  trading  nation.  All  I  know  is  that  the  manufactur- 
ing classes  aren't  properly  represented  in  Parliament. 
Reform  Bills  are  quite  useless.  We  are  still  at  the 
mercy  of  the  aristocracy,  and  if  the  fools  go  on  as  they 
are  doing  they  will  ruin  the  country." — "What  are  they 
doing?"  asked  Jamie. — "Nothing.  That's  the  point."- 
"Very  well  then.  John  is  coming  home  with  a  head 
bursting  with  political  ideas.  He'll  put  things  right  for 
you." — "John  ?  What  can  he  do  ?" — "He's  coming  home 
with  a  fortune."— "What?" 


MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED          353 

Tom  sat  down  heavily.  Jamie  and  Margaret  had  a 
splendid  moment.  Very  deliberately  and  with  a  nice 
picking  of  his  words  he  set  forth  the  nature  of  John's 
achievement  in  the  manipulation  of  corrugated-iron 
sheets  for  the  building  of  huts  in  the  new  Australian 
gold-fields.  Tom  sat  pondering  it  and  at  last  he  scratched 
his  head  in  approval. — "I'll  always  respect  a  man  who 
knows  his  opportunity.  But  he's  a  fool  to  come  home. 
He  can't  have  exhausted  it." — "Perhaps,"  said  Jamie, 
"having  tasted  gold-rush  profits  he  cannot  stomach  those 
of  ordinary  trade." — "Aye,"  said  Thomas.  "It  does 
need  a  strong  stomach  to  do  that.  When  I  think  of  the 
business  that  old  Andrew  had "  He  bit  his  lip. 

"If  he's  on  his  way,"  said  Margaret,  "how  long  will 
it  be  before  his  return?" — "Sailing  vessel?"  asked  Tom, 
and  Jamie  nodded. — "Three  months,  at  least." 

They  fell  then  to  making  plans  for  John.  He  could 
have  a  house  just  outside  Thrigsby,  if  his  lungs  were 
no  better  and  he  could  easily  find  a  use  for  his  capital. 
Margaret  returned  to  her  old  charge  and  hinted  at  a 
partnership  in  Keith's. — Tom  sneered:  "Why,  John 
would  just  laugh  at  our  trade !  It  isn't  capital  we  want. 
It's  specialisation."  He  caught  Jamie's  eye  probing  into 
him  and  his  mouth  shut  on  his  words  like  a  trap.  He 
never  had  given  himself  away  to  his  elder  brother  and 
he  never  would.  He  could  not  know  that  Agnes  had 
given  him  away  in  the  matter  of  the  Diirers  but  some- 
thing in  Jamie's  mood  roused  his  hostility.  This  he 
vented  on  John  and  began  to  rail  against  his  coming 
home. — "If  a  man  makes  money  out  of  a  place,"  he 
said,  "he  ought  to  stay  there  and  give  it  the  benefit  of 
his  brains.  Colonies  are  not  farms,  they  are  not  so 
many  Tom  Tiddler's  grounds.  If  we  are  to  be  an  Em- 
pire then  we  ought  to  feed  not  bleed  the  Colonies.  We 


354  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

lost  America  because  we  failed  to  do  that,  and  as  long 
as  we  have  men  going  out  and  playing  this  trick  of 
John's  we  shall  never  construct  anything.  Fair  trade 
is  fair  trade  but  a  trick's  a  trick." — "One  would  think," 
said  Margaret,  "that  you  were  not  glad  of  your  brother's 
success." — "Oh!  I'm  glad  enough.  Australia  must  be 
a  beastly  hole  and  Sophia  will  be  glad  to  get  back."- 
"To  Thrigsby?"  asked  Jamie. — "Yes,"  flared  Tom,  "and 
what's  the  matter  with  Thrigsby  ?  It's  been  good  enough 
for  two  generations  of  Greigs  and  for  many  of  the  best 
families  in  Scotland.  Oh !  I  know  you  sneer  at  it  in  your 
scribbling  because  it  isn't  an  Edinburgh  or  a  London 
with  their  artistic  and  literary  fops  and  society  fallals. 
But  we're  honest  hard-working  home-loving  men  and 
don't  need  or  look  for  anything  else.  We're  proud  of 
Thrigsby." — "I'll  believe  that,"  said  Jamie,  "when  you 
clean  the  river,  so  that  I  can  fish  in  it.  I  should  like  to 
retire  at  forty  with  a  competence  and  spend  my  days  in 
the  middle  of  Thrigsby,  fishing,  and  contemplating  the 
meaning  of  human  activity." — Agnes  broke  into  laughter 
and  though  Tom  looked  hurt  and  puzzled  he  too  was 
restored  to  good  humour  and  produced  Madeira  wine 
and  cake  with  which  to  celebrate  John's  home-coming. 
More  graciously  he  said :  "I  do  object  and  I  think  I  have 
every  right  to  object  that  you  and  your  people  on  The 
Post  do  not  give  us  credit  for  doing  our  best." — "The 
English,"  said  Jamie,  "are  shirkers  and  slackers  and  mud- 
dlers. They  need  perpetual  criticism  to  keep  them  up  to 
the  mark." — "I  agree,"  said  Tom,  "but  not  when  we 
are  going  through  a  crisis,  and  I  am  not  an  Englishman." 
— "No,"  said  Margaret,  now  quite  happy  that  the  bite 
had  gone  out  of  the  talk.  "In  all  Scotland  you  will 
not  find  anybody  so  Scottish."— "Well,"  said  Tom,  "if 
it  makes  you  happy,  mother,  there  is  no  more  to  be  said, 


MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED          355 

and  John  will  now  be  able  to  pay  his  share  of  the  pension 
money." 

Agnes  took  Margaret  away  to  see  some  silks  she  had 
bought  in  France.  The  brothers  sat  for  some  time  in 
silence,  each  sipping  his  Madeira.  At  last  Jamie  said : 
"This  reminds  me  of  old  days  at  Clibran.  And  you  are 
wonderfully  like  old  Andrew." — "Do  you  think  so?" 
asked  Tom,  flattered  and  warmed  by  having  one  of  his 
private  convictions  confirmed. — "Wonderfully  like.  I'm 
thinking  of  selling  Clibran." — "Why?  The  time  hasn't 
come  yet." — "I'm  sick  of  having  it  eating  its  head  off 
and  a  garden  run  wild  is  enough  to  make  angels  weep." 

-"I  thought  you  poet  fellows  believed  in  Nature. "- 
"Only  through  human  nature.  I'm  going  to  sell  it."- 
"In  another  two  years  you'll  get  double  the  price.  Sell 
the  bricks  and  mortar  if  you  like  but  hold  on  to  the 
land."— "No.  I  shall  sell  now."— "Then  you'll  be  doing 
me  a  disservice." — "How?" — "I  bought  the  farm  next 
to  it.  The  two  lots  should  go  together." — "You  never 
told  me  that." — "It  was  my  business." — "I  think  you 
ought  to  have  told  me.  It  affected  my  property."- 
"Well,  I've  told  you  now.  We  ought  to  come  to  some 
agreement  about  it.  If  that  part  of  the  town  develops 
as  I  think  it  will  it  ought  to  be  possible  to  sell  the  two 
together,  or  we  might  be  able  to  realise  a  good  ground 
rent."-  -"I'd  prefer  to  get  rid  of  it.  I  hate  the  place." — 
"I  think  you're  a  fool." — "Maybe,  but  I  want  to  get  rid 
of  it."— "Will  you  sell  it  to  me?"— "I  don't  care  about 
doing  business  with  relations.  It  always  leads  to  quar- 
rels."— "But  there'll  be  no  room  for  quarrels.  We  can 
have  a  valuation  by  an  agreed  surveyor." — "No.  I 
won't  sell  it  to  you,  Tom." — "Will  you  sell  it  to  Agnes?" 
— The  quick  turn  so  amused  Jamie  and  he  was  so  pleased 
with  the  comic  spectacle  of  Tom  in  action,  really  alive 


356  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

and  keen  and  full  of  enthusiasm  and  for  once  in  a  way 
forgetting  himself,  that  he  consented  to  sell  Clibran  Hall 
to  Agnes,  and  said  that  he  would  take  fifteen  hundred 
for  it.  Tom  brushed  that  aside  and  insisted  on  a  valua- 
tion.— "Eh,  man,"  he  cried,  "you're  a  fool.  Another 
two  years  would  treble  the  value  of  it.  And  think  of 
the  value  in  your  sons'  time.  Think  of  leaving  them 
to  be  ground  landlords  in  Thrigsby.  That's  how  the 
Greigs  are  what  they  are.  They've  half  Queen  Street 
and  two-thirds  of  Sowgate,  in  addition  to  the  business." 
— But  Jamie  thought  of  Mr.  Wilcox  and  the  dreams  that 
generous  simpleton  had  been  weaving  on  the  strength  of 
his  promise  to  find  money  for  the  theatre,  and  the  dreams 
of  Mr.  Wilcox  seemed  to  him  to  be  more  valuable  than 
all  the  security  of  the  Greigs  as  they  slumbered  away 
their  lives  in  the  lovely  valley  they  had  spoiled  with 
their  houses.  He  could  imagine  the  little  ugly  man  who 
had  never  in  his  life  earned  five  pounds  a  week  glowing 
at  the  thought  of  spending  hundreds  in  the  hope  of  giv- 
ing others  pleasure.  And  the  dreams  of  Mr.  Wilcox 
were  his  own.  He  had  pointed  the  way,  hardly  believ- 
ing that  it  could  ever  be  open  until  his  friend,  the  first 
he  had  ever  made  in  Thrigsby,  had  walked  down  it.  He 
could  not  fail  Mr.  Wilcox.  He  agreed  to  Tom's  pro- 
posal. 

When  Agnes  came  down  Jamie  informed  her  that  he 
had  sold  her  a  house  as  an  investment  for  her  children's 
children. — "Clibran?"  asked  Margaret,  and  Jamie  ex- 
plained that  Tom  had  bought  the  farm  next  to  it  and 
needed  the  house  to  round  off  the  property. — "I'll  have 
the  farm  conveyed  to  Agnes  too,"  said  Tom,  now  in  fine 
feather.  He  urged  his  mother  and  brother  to  stay  to 
supper  but  Jamie  refused.  He  had  work  to  do,  he  said, 
and  in  spite  of  himself  the  sight  of  Tom  and  Agnes 


MORLEY  STREET  TRANSFIGURED  357 

together  oppressed  him,  and  he  was  glad  to  be  out  of 
the  house.  He  was  glad  also  to  be  rid  of  Clibran,  the 
last  link  that  bound  him  to  old  Andrew,  and  curiously 
it  had  rid  him  of  Hubert  also.  He  had  nothing  now 
to  do  with  either  the  Keiths  or  the  Greigs  except  through 
his  mother  in  whom  he  liked  to  think  that  the  best  of 
them  was  to  be  found.  Now  his  life  was  divided  be- 
tween the  new  glory  that  was  growing  in  Morley  Street 
and  the  greater  glory  which  he  hoped  to  find  through  Mr. 
Wilcox.  He  had  left  Agnes  sitting  with  a  basket  of 
wools  by  the  fireplace  and  Tom,  on  the  other  side  of  it, 
reaching  over  for  volume  C-D  of  the  Encyclopaedia,  and 
he  thought  whimsically  that  he  would  recommend  En- 
cyclopaedia to  Mr.  Wilcox  as  a  substitute  for  Meso- 
potamia. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

SANCHO  WILCOX 


THE  agreed  surveyor  valued  Clibran  Hall  at  twelve 
hundred  pounds,  and  that  sum  Jamie  received 
from  Agnes'  trustees,  less  the  cost  of  the  conveyance 
which  they  had  had  prepared  by  their  lawyer.  It  was  a 
long  business,  but  Jamie  went  straight  to  Mr.  Wilcox  and 
promised  that  for  six  months  he  would  guarantee  at 
least  one  hundred  pounds  a  month  for  any  venture  to  be 
entered  upon  at  the  theatre.  Such  wealth  seemed  fabu- 
lous to  that  worthy.  He  would  at  last  have  a  say  in  the 
management.  He  would  have  only  to  breathe  the  words 
"One  hundred  a  month,"  and  all  his  dreams  would  come 
true.  There  would  be  crowded  and  enthusiastic  audi- 
ences every  night:  there  would  be  no  more  slipshod 
and  listless  acting;  and  every  day  there  would  be  ener- 
getic keen  rehearsals  with  everybody  word-perfect  and 
nobody  jealous  of  anybody  else,  and  he  himself  would 
be  allowed  to  play  Tony  Lumpkin  in  She  Stoops  to  Con- 
quer instead  of  Old  Hardcastle  to  whom  he  had  always 
been  condemned.  He  could  hardly  contain  his  eager 
happiness  and  almost  every  day  came  round  to  the  bank, 
as  Jamie  was  leaving,  with  new  suggestions  and  ideas.  He 
harked  back  to  his  old  plan  of  a  prologue  and  one  night 
in  an  ecstasy  he  proposed  that  Jamie  himself  should 
play  Hamlet. — "Shave  that  beard,"  he  said,  "though 

358 


SANCHO  WILCOX  359 

there's  nothing  to  show  that  Hamlet  didn't  have  a  beard. 
It's  the  face;  it's  the  moody  Dane  to  a  T.  Now,  why 
do  men  fail  with  Hamlet?  Because  it  needs  more  than 
acting.  It  needs  the  heaven-searching  brain.  Actors  as 
a  rule  don't  have  that.  I  haven't  got  it.  You've  got 
it.  You  had  it  when  you  were  a  boy.  Acting  by  itself 
is  all  right  for  Macbeth  or  Othello,  which  play  them- 
selves, but  there's  more  in  Hamlet.  You  can't  let  fly 
at  Hamlet.  'That's  where  you  would  come  in,  for  you 
don't  let  fly  at  anything,  but  you  feel  it  just  the  same. 
Whenever  I  do  a  bit  of  Hamlet,  just  for  the  words,  I 
say  to  myself  that's  young  James  Lawrie  all  over.  Get 
him  out  of  his  office  clothes,  shave  that  beard,  put  a 
skull  into  his  hands  and  there  you  are." — So  saying 
he  lifted  up  a  tobacco  jar  from  the  mantelshelf,  seized 
the  red  and  black  tablecloth  and  flung  it  round  Jamie's 
shoulders.  Then  he  himself  retired  behind  the  great 
horsehair  arm-chair  and  became  the  gravedigger: — 
*  'Cudgel  thy  brains  no  more  about  it,  for  your  dull  ass 
will  not  mend  his  pace  with  beating ;  and,  when  you  are 
asked  this  question  next,  say,  a  gravemaker :  the  houses 
that  he  makes,  last  till  doomsday.'  Now  I've  thrown 
up  the  skull.  You  go  on." — And  Jamie  took  up  his  part : 
"That  skull  had  a  tongue  in  it,  and  could  sing  once: 
how  the  knave  jowls  it  to  the  ground,  as  if  it  were  Cain's 
jawbone,  that  did  the  first  murder!"  And  so  on  they 
took  it  to  the  end  of  the  scene,  Mr.  Wilcox  when  neces- 
sary becoming  Horatio.  He  was  loud  in  his  applause. — 
"You  must  do  it.  Promise  me,  you'll  do  it.  For  there 
never  was,  there  never  could  be  such  a  Hamlet.  I  tell 
you  it  made  my  back  open  and  shut  to  hear  you.  If  it 
had  been  the  Ghost  scene !  Will  you  do  the  Ghost  scene 
now?  I  can  be  the  Ghost  and  talk  into  a  jug." — Jamie 
dared  not  laugh,  for  fear  of  spoiling  the  comedian's 


360  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

pleasure. — "No,  no,"  he  said,  "we've  had  enough." — 
"If  you  did  the  Ghost  scene  you  would  be  terror  itself, 
and  the  audience  will  say,  what  are  all  our  little  fears 
to  the  terror  of  so  brave  a  man." — "I  think  not,"  said 
Jamie,  "the  audience  would  say  this  fellow  can't  act  for 
toffee,  and  they'd  go  out  of  the  theatre.  What  is  acting 
to  you  and  me  here  in  this  little  room  would  be  lost  in 
the  great  theatre.  Believe  me,  it  would  need  an  art  that 
I  don't  possess." — "But,  but,"  cried  Mr.  Wilcox,  now 
very  chap-fallen,  "it's  the  real  thing,  and  you've  always 
said  an  audience  must  recognise  the  real  thing  when  it  is 
put  before  them." — "Yes,"  said  Jamie,  "but  it  must  be 
given  flesh  and  shape.  The  actor  must  make  no  move- 
ment that  is  not  effective  to  his  purpose,  he  must  use  no 
tone  of  his  voice  that  does  not  contribute  to  the  rhythm 
of  his  scene." — "But  if  you  know  all  this!" — "My  good 
friend,"  said  Jamie,  "I  only  know  enough  to  tell  when 
other  people  are  wrong.  That  does  not  mean  that  I 
can  do  the  thing  right  myself.  The  one  thing,  I  assure 
you,  that  you  do  not  want  in  your  theatre  is  the  ama- 
teur."— "Then  we  shall  have  to  open  with  a  comedy," 
said  Mr.  Wilcox,  "for  we  have  no  tragedian  since  Henry 
Acomb  went  to  London." — "There  is  no  money  in 
tragedy,"  answered  Jamie.  "I  doubt  if  Thrigsby,  as  it 
is  now,  would  listen  to  Siddons  if  she  came.  Let  it  be 
comedy,  and,  if  comedy  fails,  try  farce.  If  farce  fails 
then  I'll  write  you  a  satire  and  that  will  be  the  end  of 
us." — "The  end  of  us !"  Mr.  Wilcox's  blood  was  up  and 
he  would  not  hear  of  that. — "There  is  a  beginning  and 
an  end  of  everything,"  said  Jamie,  "and  nothing  is 
permanent  and  it  seems  folly  to  me  to  ignore  that."- 
"When  you  talk  like  that,"  observed  Mr.  Wilcox,  "I 
feel  that  there  is  nothing  left  for  me  to  do  but  to  put 
my  head  in  a  bag  and  drown  myself." — "And  yet,"  re- 


SANCHO  WILCOX  361 

plied  Jamie,  "it  is  only  when  I  talk  like  that  that  I  have 
any  confidence  in  myself  or  any  power  to  endure — what 
I  have  to  endure." 

Mr.  Wilcox  asked  for  an  advance  of  ten  pounds  and 
then  for  six  days  he  disappeared.  On  the  seventh  day 
he  returned  with  a  bill  written  out  on  the  fly-leaf  of 
a  play-book  showing  how  he  had  expended  the  money: 

By  railway  fares  .  x •-  .  .  .  .  £4  13  4 
By  victuals  .  •'.•"  .  .  .  .  130 

By  i  pr.  boots  having  worn  out  one  pr.  in 

walking  from  Matlock  to  Derby  .  .  o  15  o 
By  postage  .  V  .  .  .  .016 

By  engaging  one  tragedian,  one  serio-comic, 
and  one  juvenile  lead  and  advancing 
travelling  expenses  to  same  .  .  .300 

£9  12   10 


And  he  pressed  into  Jamie's  hand  seven  shillings  and 
twopence. — "But  you  needn't  account  for  every  penny," 
said  Jamie. — "Indeed  I  must,"  replied  Mr.  Wilcox.  "It 
must  all  be  in  order,  indeed  it  must.  I  was  doubtful 
about  the  boots  but  as  they  were  worn  out  in  the  search 
for  talent  and  I  could  not  go  on  without  boots  I  thought 
it  best  to  get  a  pair  and  account  for  them." — "But  you 
have  been  a  week  out  of  work." — "What's  a  week  out 
of  work  to  an  actor  ?"  said  Mr.  Wilcox.  "Nothing.  And 
I'm  fortunate.  Being  local  I  can  always  fill  out  with 
concerts  and  readings." 

He  had  made  his  arrangements  with  the  management, 
who,  being  in  a  lean  period,  were  only  too  glad,  if  possi- 
ble, to  do  without  the  travelling  "stars"  who  demanded 
so  exorbitant  a  share  of  whatever  the  profits  might  be, 


362  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

in  addition  to  their  guarantee.  They  had  no  difficulty 
in  hoodwinking  Mr.  Wilcox  who  imagined  that  they 
shared  his  enthusiasm  and  were  all  for  making  the 
theatre  worthy  of  Thrigsby,  and  in  time  Thrigsby 
worthy  of  the  theatre,  that  is  the  theatre  of  Mr.  Wilcox' s 
imagination,  where  it  was  as  a  shining  citadel  so  brilliant 
that  all  else  became  invisible,  and  all  men  turned  to  it 
and  only  lived  through  the  day  that  in  the  evening  they 
might  pay  their  five  shillings  and  half-crowns  and  shil- 
lings and  have  their  sides  shaken  with  laughter  and  their 
eyes  salted  with  tears.  He  asked  no  other  profit.  His 
heaven  was  to  be  in  front  of  a  good  audience  and  he 
imagined  that  James  Lawrie  had  showed  him  the  way 
to  it.  Therefore  he  was  eternally  grateful  and  could  not 
conceive  that  his  friend  existed  for  any  other  purpose 
than  to  receive  his  gratitude  and  to  share  his  heaven 
when  it  was  won.  He  was  like  a  woman  in  love,  allow- 
ing the  whole  world  and  all  life  to  be  blotted  out  by  the 
treasure  that  he  had  the  illusion  of  holding  in  his  hands. 
And  like  a  woman  in  love  he  sought  a  jealous  possession 
of  the  person  from  whom  his  treasure  seemed  to  have 
come.  Often  he  caused  Jamie  to  feel  that  he  was  be- 
traying his  friend  and  his  friend's  happiness.  He  simply 
could  not  rise  to  the  heated  exaltation  that  possessed 
Mr.  Wilcox.  All  he  hoped  for  was  that  in  the  experi- 
ment the  theatre  might  be  lifted  a  little  from  the  low 
level  it  had  reached.  In  solitary  and  philosophic  mo- 
ments he  did  sometimes  dream  vaguely  and  painfully  of 
a  regeneration  of  Thrigsby  through  art,  but,  soberly, 
when  he  went  about  his  business,  he  was  forced  to  con- 
fess that  Thrigsby,  articulate  Thrigsby,  saw  no  necessity 
for  any  regeneration,  and  found  so  much  satisfaction  in 
its  functions  as  a  trading  centre  that  it  hardly  ever  re- 
quired to  be  amused.  He  was  still  rather  vague  in  his 


SANCHO  WILCOX  363 

mind  and  could  not  clearly  associate  poetry  with  experi- 
ence. Poets  were  to  him  beings  almost  as  far  above 
humanity  as  the  angels.  They  had,  so  he  imagined, 
some  extra  source  of  vitality  given  to  them  for  the  pro- 
duction of  verses,  through  which  those  who  had  the 
power  to  respond  could  escape  the  tyranny  of  the  crowd- 
ing monotonous  days.  He  was  no  poet  himself.  Had 
he  been  one  he  would  not  have  stayed  more  or  less  con- 
tented in  the  bank  while  Mr.  Rigby  Blair  turned  it  from 
the  instrument  of  an  efficient  man  into  a  machine  efficient 
in  itself.  On  the  other  hand  it  pleased  him  to  take  money 
out  of  the  bank  and  give  it  to  Mr.  Wilcox  to  whom,  for 
its  own  sake,  it  was  entirely  valueless.  He  felt  that  in 
so  doing  he  was  putting  the  bank  in  its  place  in  his  mind 
and  not  allowing  it  to  absorb  more  of  his  energy  than 
was  absolutely  essential  to  it.  Yet  he  was  not  satisfied. 
The  Wilcox  transaction  had  added  to  his  discomfort  in 
one  way  though  it  had  relieved  him  in  another.  He  could 
never  be  morally  comfortable  without  his  mind  working 
on  his  condition,  not  always,  of  course,  to  good  purpose, 
and  more  than  once  he  came  very  near  to  realisation  of 
the  truth  that  he  was  attempting  the  impossible,  to  buy 
his  freedom. 

He  found  that  when  this  new  unhappiness  was  upon 
him  he  liked  to  be  near  his  mother.  Her  serenity  was 
very  healing  to  him.  He  knew  her  to  be  as  proud  as 
himself,  and  stronger,  as  sensitive  and  as  obstinate  in 
struggling  with  anything  that  menaced  her  serenity. 
Yet  she  could  more  easily  recover  it  than  he.  He  tried 
to  talk  to  her  about  it  to  discover  the  nature  of  that 
ordered  universe  in  which  she  dwelt  so  securely.  He 
talked  to  her  of  death  and  of  good  work  she  had  done 
for  a  friend  of  hers  whose  life  had  been  most  miserable, 
to  end  in  the  failure  of  a  beloved  son  and  poverty  in- 


364  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

curred  through  his  wicked  recklessness.  He  found  that 
she  believed  absolutely  in  a  future  life:  that  the  woman 
and  her  son  would  eventually  be  united  in  perfect  love; 
that  the  woman  would  wait  by  the  gates  of  heaven 
through  the  age-long  torment  of  her  body  until  sin  in 
forgiveness  ceased  to  be  and  all  would  be  united  with 
those  whom  they  had  loved. — "Tom  and  Agnes?"  asked 
Jamie. — "Tom  and  Agnes,  but  the  curse  of  Eve  will  be 
removed  and  there  will  be  neither  marriage  nor  giving 
in  marriage." — "John  and  Sophia?" — "John  and  Sophia, 
of  course.  All  those  who  have  loved  each  other." — It 
was  almost  pictorial  to  her,  but  to  him  it  meant  nothing. 
It  seemed  so  completely  to  ignore  this  world  in  which 
for  good  or  ill  he  was  living.  But  he  could  understand 
and  rejoice  most  profoundly  in  the  wonderful  love  that 
suffused  her  picture  and  gave  a  certain  majesty  to  its 
ugly  ruggedness  and  coldness.  It  was  a  good  logical  con- 
ception, but  he  could  not  accept  its  logic,  for  its  premiss, 
the  postponement  of  love,  was  foreign  to  him  and  impossi- 
ble as  a  postulate  for  the  business  of  living.  If  love  were 
postponed  then  Thrigsby  was  right,  Tom  was  right,  and 
a  man  must  obey  the  dictate  of  circumstances  and  seek 
neither  to  transcend  nor  to  amend  them. — Here  however 
there  was  a  discrepancy.  Torn  had  not  his  mother's 
faith.  He  did  not  merely  postpone  the  active  principle 
of  love  but  absolutely  ignored  it.  To  Margaret  life 
was  inevitably  tragic;  to  Tom  it  was,  as  to  ancient 
Pistol,  an  oyster  to  be  pried  open:  gulp  down  the  little 
morsel  of  jelly  and  throw  the  shells  away.  To  Jamie  it 
was  alternately  beautiful  and  comic,  and  more  often  the 
latter,  and  as  he  grew  older  the  comic  became  more 
unbearable  and  drove  him  into  the  desire  for  more 
beauty.  On  the  other  hand,  being  excessively  sensitive 
and  lacking  the  kind  of  experience  which  toughens  the 


SANCHO  WILCOX  365 

moral  fibres,  in  the  presence  of  beauty  he  was  over- 
modest  and  shy  and  rather  preferred  the  hint  of  it  to  its 
full  flowering.  Possibly  the  climate  of  Thrigsby  had  a 
good  deal  to  do  with  it.  The  mists  of  England  cause 
all  things  to  appear  in  the  most  questionable  shapes, 
which,  reacting  upon  the  minds  of  those  who  live  among 
them,  produce  the  oddest  effects  of  character,  and,  most 
often,  a  very  touching  timidity  in  the  face  of  an  emo- 
tion. That  may  or  may  not  have  been  the  cause  of 
James  Lawrie's  growing  inability  to  do  what  was  ex- 
pected of  him  and  even  what  he  expected  of  himself. 
He  could  never  put  his  finger  on  any  valid  reason  for 
his  objection  to  Tom  and  Tom's  ways.  There,  out- 
wardly, was  all  that  a  man  can  desire,  comfort,  ease, 
independence,  a  handsome,  accomplished,  dutiful  and 
wealthy  wife,  the  respect  of  his  fellow-citizens  both  on 
week  days  and  Sundays.  At  best  he  could  only  tell  him- 
self that  it  was  because  Tom  had  become  so  perfectly 
Thrigsbeian  and  that  Thrigsby  was  wrong:  exactly  how 
he  did  not  know,  but  he  knew  it.  The  bank  was  very 
typical  of  Thrigsby  and  the  bank  was  wrong,  for  it  was 
the  collective  product  of  a  number  of  minds  over  which 
no  single  mind  had  any  genuine  power.  A  good  machine 
you  can  start  and  you  can  stop:  but  there  was  no  stop- 
ping the  bank.  It  simply  swallowed  up  money  and  human 
life.  It  was  really  very  like  the  machinery  of  Margaret's 
religion,  which  also  swallowed  up  money  and  human  life 
in  order  to  create  a  strange  empty  world  from  which  all 
good  had  been  postponed.  Everyone  else  accepted  this 
affair  cheerfully  and  quite  blandly  the  Thrigsbeians 
treated  each  other  abominably:  Margaret,  for  instance, 
in  spite  of  her  belief  in  a  future  love  was  quite  content 
to  stifle  the  life  out  of  Tibby  and  to  leave  her  for  days 
without  a  smile  or  a  kindly  word;  and  so  the  Toms 


366  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

and  the  Greigs  were  quite  happy  to  take  their  comfort 
out  of  Thrigsby  and  to  allow  its  slums  like  a  dirty  flood 
to  swell  out  all  over  the  city.  Jamie  did  not  so  much 
know  better,  as  know  that  Shakespeare  and  Spenser 
and  Shelley  and  Keats  and  William  Blake  knew  better, 
and,  being  of  a  natural  indolence  and  unpractical,  he  was 
quite  content  to  take  their  word  for  it  and  to  relieve  him- 
self in  mild  satire  in  The  Weekly  Post  and  in  the  en- 
couragement of  Mr.  Wilcox,  whom,  fundamentally,  he 
admired  because  he  had  had  the  courage  to  abandon 
Keith's  for  the  sake  of  the  thing  he  believed. 

Jamie  had  to  work  very  hard  during  those  summer 
months.  Mr.  Wilcox  was  not  going  to  let  him  off.  He 
had  to  write  articles  about  the  modern  industrial  city 
and  the  theatre  and  the  disadvantages  of  the  "star"  sys- 
tem; he  had  to  write  about  Shakespearean  and  English 
comedy:  he  had  to  write  about  the  great  tradition  of 
English  acting,  unbroken  from  Betterton  down  to  the 
nineteenth  century,  when,  with  so  much  else,  it  had  been 
engulfed.  He  had  to  interview  actors  and  approve  them 
and  he  had  to  arbitrate  in  squabbles  between  Mr.  Wil- 
cox and  the  management,  and  also  to  extricate  Mr. 
Wilcox  from  the  financial  bogs  into  which  he  kept 
floundering. 

At  first  Jamie  was  rather  tepid  in  all  he  did.  In  his 
writing  he  borrowed  wholesale  from  Hazlitt,  and  Mr. 
Wilcox's  difficulties  were  so  comic  as  to  seem  unim- 
portant. But  gradually  he  warmed  to  his  task  and  be- 
came conscious  of  a  release  of  energy.  His  thoughts 
no  longer  were  so  exasperatingly  separate  from  his 
existence,  and  he  could  control  them  better,  extract  more 
from  them.  He  became  more  hopeful  and  almost  vision- 
ary. In  his  sanguine  dreams  he  exceeded  his  colleague 
in  his  idea  of  what  the  theatre  was  going  to  do  for 


SANCHO  WILCOX  367 

Thrigsby.  It  should  not  only  provide  them  with  more 
and  finer  amusement  than  any  they  had  ever  known,  but 
it  should  make  them  think.  As  Jamie  in  his  innocence 
imagined  it,  that  was  a  perfectly  painless  process.  The 
Thrigsbeians  had  but  to  love  the  dramatic  fare  set  before 
them  and  at  once  they  would  begin  to  use  their  brains, 
not  only  upon  their  daily  tasks  but  upon  life  beyond 
them.  So  great  would  this  new  delight  be  to  them  that 
they  would  detest  all  that  had  previously  kept  it  from 
them.  They  would  abhor  their  little  round  of  excessive 
business.  They  would  say :  "This  new  joy  has  come  out 
of  life.  There  must  be  more,  boundless  stores  of  it, 
if  we  could  but  release  it." 

All  this  enthusiastic  work  went  to  Jamie's  head  and 
he  had  a  fine  period  of  intoxication.  He  was  himself 
to  a  certain  extent  regenerate.  He  had  known  nothing 
like  it  since  Selina  and  enjoyed  this  more  because  he 
was  more  free.  The  routine  of  the  bank  carried  him 
through  the  day  and  at  five  o'clock  he  came  wonderfully 
to  life.  He  felt  irresistible  and  was  so  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent. His  energy  carried  him  into  the  newspaper  offices 
to  win  the  support  of  the  editors  who  all  wanted  to  know 
what  names  he  had  behind  him.  He  had  thought 
Shakespeare's  and  Goldsmith's  and  Sheridan's  good 
enough  but  they  wanted  local  names.  Therefore  he  pro- 
cured a  Greig  or  two,  and  an  ex-Mayor,  the  Town  Clerk 
and  the  principal  of  Grime's  College.  Armed  with  these 
he  procured  promise  of  support,  but  then  found  that  he 
had  to  earn  these  names.  The  ex-Mayor  wanted  to 
figure  in  Quintus  Flumen's  series  of  Thrigsby  worthies : 
the  principal  of  Grime's  College  wanted  a  lecture  on  the 
drama:  and  the  Town  Clerk  wished  to  be  admitted 
behind  the  scenes.  All  these  commercial  transactions 
rather  sullied  the  purity  of  the  reformer's  ardour  but  he 


368  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

went  through  with  them,  wrote  satirically  of  the  ex- 
Mayor,  gave  a  very  bad  and  incoherent  lecture,  and  took 
the  Town  Clerk  behind  the  scenes  and  let  him  talk  to 
the  wardrobe  mistress,  who  did  not  in  the  least  mind 
being  treated  as  though  she  kept  a  bagnio. 

Outside  the  theatre  both  Jamie  and  his  henchman 
were  consumed  with  a  fever.  Once  inside  it  they  were 
swept  up  into  a  blissful  dream.  They  were  like  gods 
filling  the  void  of  chaos,  but,  unlike  gods,  they  were 
driven  on  by  some  purpose  greater  than  themselves. 
There  was  magic  in  their  ringers;  difficulties  and  quar- 
rels disappeared  before  them.  Where  Mr.  Wilcox  saw 
a  difficulty  Jamie  could  not  see  it,  and  at  once  it  would 
disappear  for  Mr.  Wilcox. — "We  can't  have  that  tattered 
old  flat,"  Mr.  Wilcox  would  say. — "It  is  the  very  thing," 
Jamie  would  reply. — "When  the  light  is  on  it  of  course 
it  will  look  different."  And  at  once  Mr.  Wilcox  would 
forget  about  it. — When  they  were  near  a  quarrel  they 
would  make  desperate  haste  to  agree,  and  at  once  the 
cause  of  the  quarrel  would  fade  away  and  be  forgotten. 
They  would  sit  for  hours  in  the  dark  auditorium  having 
the  light  turned  up  and  down,  until  the  management 
asked  them  if  they  knew  they  were  doubling  the  gas- 
bill.  Then  they  played  with  the  scenery  and  the  ward- 
robe, and  that  game  cost  Jamie  nearly  one  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds.  But  his  blood  was  up  and  he  would  not 
count  the  cost.  The  theatre  must  be  made  worthy  of 
the  wonders  that  the  New  Company  was  to  bring  to 
birth  in  it.  So  fascinating,  so  intoxicating  was  this 
fingering  of  the  machinery  of  the  theatre  that  it  was 
often  one  or  two  in  the  morning  before  he  got  home  and 
Margaret  more  than  half  convinced  herself  that  he  had 
taken  to  wild  courses,  save  that  he  never  smelled  of 
whisky,  nor  had  his  complexion  taken  on  the  queer  floury 


SANCHO  WILCOX  369 

tone  induced  by  debauchery.  He  was  wonderfully  fresh 
and  eager:  so  eager  that  when  it  came  to  actual  work 
in  the  theatre  and  others  than  Mr.  Wilcox  had  to  be 
admitted  he  felt  rather  dashed  and  hopeless.  Re- 
hearsals were  a  torment.  The  actors  simply  could  not 
speak  their  lines  with  any  sense  of  the  value  of  words. 
They  were  indifferent  to  words  and  would  substitute 
for  Shakespeare's  noble  prose  trite  banalities  of  their 
own.  They  seemed  to  Jamie  to  be  doing  it  on  purpose. 
As  a  critic  he  had  rarely  noticed  such  substitutions, 
being  far  too  much  absorbed  in  the  emotional  structure 
of  the  play.  But  now  watching  the  actors  in  their 
ordinary  clothes  and  being  no  longer  a  mere  spectator 
but  an  essential  part  of  the  organism  he  was  labouring 
to  create,  every  slip,  every  distortion  hurt  him  as  an 
abomination,  and  he  would  curse  and  swear  under  his 
breath,  but  never  dared  do  more  than  mildly  and  sar- 
castically suggest  the  value  of  accuracy,  for  the  actors 
always  treated  him  as  an  intruder  and  made  him  feel 
very  small  indeed. — "Sir,"  an  old  man  once  said  to  him, 
"I  have  been  on  the  boards  thirty  years  and  if  there 
is  a  laugh  in  a  line  I  can  get  it." — "Fool!"  said  Jamie 
under  his  breath,  "there's  a  pleasure  and  a  beauty  in 
words  themselves.  Who  wants  to  laugh  while  he  is 
tasting  that?" 

Fortunately  the  actors  would  listen  to  Mr.  Wilcox  as 
one  of  themselves  and  he  was  able  to  expunge  some  of 
their  enormities,  but  they  shattered  Jamie's  dreams,  and 
he  soon  saw  that  the  New  Company  was  simply  the 
old  writ  large  and  that  Thrigsby  had  and  would  continue 
to  have  the  theatre  it  deserved.  Further  he  saw  that 
for  a  man  engaged  in  its  commerce  to  attempt  in  his 
spare  time  to  give  it  better  was  little  short  of  impudence. 
The  task  was  Herculean  and  made  him  almost  desperate 


370  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

with  unhappiness.  If  it  was  worth  doing  it  was  worth 
doing  wholly  and  that  for  him  was  impossible.  An 
essential  part  of  his  personality  remained  outside  the 
work,  being  pledged  to  the  ambitions  of  his  family.  He 
knew  that  if,  as  was  necessary  for  the  work  he  had 
undertaken,  he  became  a  vagabond,  the  idea  of  Tom's 
triumphant  "I  told  you  so"  would  paralyse  him.  More 
than  that,  he  admitted  that  Tom  was  not  the  real  ob- 
stacle so  much  as  his  own  liking  for  respectability.  The 
duality  of  his  existence  was  beginning  to  tell  upon  him 
and  he  had  appalling  moments  when  he  lost  all  sense  of 
his  own  reality,  even  the  physical  appreciation  of  the  fact 
of  living.  Food  lost  its  taste,  flowers  their  scent,  the  sky 
its  colour,  and  the  end  of  it  was  a  miserable  liaison  with 
a  young  woman  of  the  theatre  who  tortured  him  for  a 
month,  at  the  end  of  which  time  he  gave  her  money  and 
sent  her  to  London. 

How  he  hated  himself  after  that!  He  crawled  back 
into  self-realisation  again  to  discover  what  looked  to 
him  like  utter  ruin,  round  which  with  idiotic  insistence 
his  normal  life  went  on.  Knowing  that  he  had  failed 
Mr.  Wilcox,  yet  he  could  not  desert  him  and  worked 
harder  than  ever,  writing,  lecturing,  attending  rehearsals, 
making  up  programmes  and  circulars,  and  himself  doing 
much  of  the  clerical  work  of  sending  out  invitations  to 
the  first  performance. 

The  dress  rehearsal  comforted  him  somewhat.  He 
got  back  into  his  old  place  in  the  stalls  and  viewed  the 
performance  critically,  rolling  the  flavour  of  it  round  his 
tongue.  Not  so  bad !  Certainly  a  better  performance  of 
a  Shakespearean  comedy  than  had  been  seen  in  a 
Thrigsby  theatre  in  his  time.  Mr.  Wilcox  as  Dogberry 
was  nobly  absurd;  but  the  Beatrice!  Great  Caesar! 
Where  on  earth  was  such  a  woman  dug  up?  She  had 


SANCHO  WILCOX  371 

the  humour  of  a  cook  and  the  diction  of  a  prima  donna. 
Jamie's  fingers  itched  to  write  the  notice  of  the  per- 
formance. How  he  would  strip  the  woman  of  her  pre- 
tensions. He  determined  that,  if  things  were  no  better 
at  the  first  performance,  he  would  write  a  notice  in  The 
Post.  His  humour  began  to  assert  itself  and  he  felt 
better. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

MRS.    LESLIE    IN    DISTRESS 


THERE  was  a  good  audience.  In  those  days  it  was 
part  of  the  fun  of  going  to  the  theatre,  if  you 
went  in  the  pit,  to  stand  for  an  hour  or  two  jammed 
in  a  crowd,  which,  when  the  doors  were  opened,  moved 
in  a  flood  and  poured  through  the  narrow  aperture. 
Jamie  went  and  stood  for  an  hour  in  the  crowd  and 
found  it  wonderfully  stimulating  to  be  pressed  and 
jostled,  to  feel  rough  human  contact,  to  smell  warm 
human  bodies.  How  good  they  were,  how  genuine  and 
solid  after  the  shadows  with  which  he  had  been  dealing : 
the  shadows  of  the  theatre,  the  shadows  of  his  own 
thoughts,  the  shadows  of  the  small  affections  with  which 
he  had  imagined  his  life  to  be  filled!  How  robust  they 
all  seemed,  and  how  humorous  in  their  appetite  for  pleas- 
ure !  They  jeered  at  the  New  Company :  hardly  a  name 
in  it  they  had  ever  heard  of.  There  were  enthusiastic 
playgoers  who  could  remember  the  great  actors  of  two 
generations.  They  were  contemptuous  of  this  new  way 
of  doing  things  and  Jamie  heard  himself  described  as : 
"some  young  swell  who  fancies  himself  and  doesn't  know 
what  to  do  with  his  money."  He  agreed,  and  was  more 
pleased  when  they  went  on :  "Quintus  Flumen  will  have 
a  word  to  say  to  this !"  and  longed  to  reveal  himself  as 
Quintus.  They  went  on  to  discuss  the  critic,  but  he 

372 


MRS.  LESLIE  IN  DISTRESS  373 

could  not  stay,  for  he  had  Tibby  and  Agnes  coming  to 
sit  with  him  in  his  box.  Tibby  had  forced  him  to  con- 
fess what  he  was  up  to  and  had  been  very  sad  about 
it,  for  she  had  thought  he  was  done  with  the  "play-act- 
ing and  all  that,"  and  she  had  told  Agnes,  who  was  her 
friend  and  very  good  to  her,  often  inviting  her  to  her 
house  for  the  pleasure  of  her  shrewd  talk  and  the  benefit 
of  her  knowledge  of  Tom's  character.  Tibby  had  not 
said  much  about  Jamie's  nefarious  activities  but  she  had 
persuaded  Agnes  to  go  with  her  and  Agnes  had  tried,  in 
vain,  to  induce  Tom  to  join  her.  He  forbade  her  to  go, 
but  she  declared  that  she  had  promised  and  must  keep 
her  word.  Very  well  then,  he  would  go  to  bed  and 
would  lock  the  door  at  eleven  and,  if  she  was  out  later 
than  that,  he  would  know  the  kind  of  woman  she  was. 
Agnes  took  the  key  of  the  back  door  and  told  her  cook 
to  see  that  it  was  left  unbolted.  She  hired  a  fly,  called 
for  Tibby  and  found  Jamie  waiting  for  them  under  the 
portico  of  the  theatre.  As  they  passed  into  the  vestibule 
they  met  Hubert,  grown  very  fat  and  brown. — "I 
couldn't  stay  away  from  this,"  said  he.  "Too  much  like 
my  own  youth  come  to  life  again." — Jamie  wondered 
how  far  he  was  really  like  Hubert,  and  hated  the  idea. 
Agnes  was  very  glad  to  see  her  cousin,  explained  to  him 
who  Tibby  was,  and  invited  him  to  sit  with  them. — "I 
knew  your  father,"  said  Hubert  to  Tibby  and  set  himself 
to  be  very  pleasant  to  her.  Tibby  said:  "Jamie  was 
the  only  one  my  father  was  anxious  about." — "People 
have  always  been  anxious  about  me,"  chuckled  Hubert, 
"and  I  am  the  only  one  of  the  Greigs  who  has  done  any 
good.  I've  won  three  medals  with  my  fat  stock.  And 
how  do  you  like  being  married,  Agnes?  The  Greigs 
don't  take  kindly  to  it  as  a  rule.  They  resent  any  in- 
fusion of  a  new  strain." — '"I'm  very  happy,"  said  Ag- 


374  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

nes. — Jamie  pricked   up  his  ears.      Her  words  carried 
conviction  even  to  his  jealousy. 

When  they  reached  the  box  Hubert  and  Agnes  sat 
in  front,  Jamie  and  Tibby  behind.  Hubert  looked  round 
the  house,  and  nodded  at  acquaintances. — "You've  pa- 
pered the  house  well,  James,"  he  said,  "though  I'd  like 
to  have  seen  a  few  more  pillars  of  virtue,  a  little  more 
of  the  cream  of  Thrigsby.  This  is  only  the  skim.  A 
fatal  mistake,  for  even  if  it  is  a  success  you  won't  get 
the  cream,  the  real  flor  de  Thrigsby.  They  like  to  be  in 
everything  from  the  beginning." — "The  cream  of  an  au- 
dience," said  Jamie,  "is  always  in  the  pit  and  the  gal- 
lery."— "But  they  won't  keep  you  going.  Please  your 
pit  and  gallery  by  all  means;  but  this  is  England,  and  if 
you  wish  to  keep  your  head  above  water  you  must  go 
for  the  snobs." — "I'd  rather  drown,"  retorted  Jamie.— 
"Then  you  certainly  will,"  said  Hubert  gaily,  "unless 
you  can  persuade  Thrigsby  that  you  are  a  genius.  No- 
body has  ever  succeeded  in  doing  that  except  by  go- 
ing to  London  and  being  successful  there." — Jamie 
shrank  away  to  the  back  of  the  box.  Hubert  withered 
even  the  little  pleasure  that  was  left  in  him. 

The  curtain  rose  and  Hubert  ceased  his  chatter.  He 
loved  the  theatre  and  had  long  ago  given  up  being- 
critical.  He  praised  the  scenery  and  leaned  back  in  his 
chair  to  compliment  his  cousin  on  the  dresses.  Then 
he  sank  back  into  enjoyment.  To  Jamie's  horror  the 
Beatrice  was  immediately  successful,  She  walked  right 
out  of  the  play  and  laboured  to  make  a  personal  effect 
and  made  it.  She  produced  ripples  of  laughter  while 
she  was  on  the  stage  and  applause  when  she  left  it.  She 
was  so  comic  that  poor  Mr.  Wilcox  as  Dogberry  had 
no  shine  left  in  him.  He  was  listened  to  as  though  he 
were  a  melancholy  interlude,  and  his  really  capital  per- 


MRS.  LESLIE  IN  DISTRESS  375 

formance  won  small  recognition.  Jamie  in  his  box  grew 
gloomier  and  gloomier.  The  loud  applause  at  the  end 
of  each  act  had  no  power  to  reassure  him.  He  was  ab- 
solutely convinced  that  he  had  laboured  in  vain  and  it 
only  irritated  him  when  Agnes  and  Tibby  excitedly  ex- 
pressed their  pleasure.  They  ought  not  to  have  been 
pleased,  and  at  least  they  ought  to  have  known  that  they 
were  being  pleased  in  the  old,  old  way,  trickily  and  with 
the  grossest  personal  appeals.  Shakespeare's  comedy 
as  now  presented  was  really  no  different  from  the  annual 
pantomime.  It  ought  to  have  ended  with  a  transfor- 
mation scene  with  Beatrice  revealed  in  the  end  as  the 
Queen  of  the  Mermaids,  or  of  the  Night,  or  as  the 
Mother  of  Nations.  How  could  people  laugh  at  her, 
and  not  feel  shamefully  that  they  ought  to  be  laughing 
with  her? 

During  the  Church  scene  Tibby  was  excited  to  recog- 
nise in  one  of  the  ladies  little  Fanny  Shaw  dressed  up 
in  long  skirts,  with  her  hair  up,  looking  like  a  doll. — 
"What  a  shame,"  she  cried. — "What's  a  shame?"  whis- 
pered Jamie,  glad  to  be  diverted  from  the  performance. 
— "That  poor  child,"  answered  Tibby,  "dressed  up  like 
a  little  old  woman.  I  declare  it  makes  me  feel  ashamed." 
— "She's  very  happy  doing  it  and  in  some  ways  she  is 
older  than  you  or  I,  Tibby." — "It's  made  me  feel,"  said 
she,  "that  I  hate  all  this  mummery." — "So  do  I,"  mut- 
tered Jamie  fiercely,  "all  mummery  whatsoever.  But 
come  behind  the  scenes  and  see  what  it  is  made  of." 

In  the  next  interval  they  went  behind  and  sought  out 
Fanny,  who  was,  as  Jamie  had  said,  very  happy,  half 
in,  half  out  of  the  play  and  deep  in  the  sorrows  of 
Hero  and  Claudio,  also  full  of  the  general  excitement 
over  the  apparent  success.  Mr.  Wilcox  had  heard  of 
Jamie's  coming  round  and  he  rushed  in  in  his  paint  and 


376  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

gaberdine,  holding  his  wig  and  hat  in  his  hands: — '"Me 
boy!"  he  said,  "me  boy!  I  always  said  from  the  first 
that  you  were  a  mascot,  and  here's  our  luck  at  last. 
She's  playing  with  them,  me  boy.  She  has  but  to  lift 
her  little  finger  and  they  laugh.  Why,  they  laugh  so 
much  they  they  only  smile  at  me,  and,  after  all,  the  play 
is  Beatrice,  ain't  it?'' — "It  is,"  said  Jamie  aghast  at  this 
tragic  end  to  all  his  hopes  of  Mr.  Wilcox,  "the  play  is 
Beatrice,  and  nothing  else.  I  should  like  to  see  what 
she  would  do  with  Hamlet." — "Women  have  played  the 
Prince,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox,  "but  she's  a  comedy  queen, 
and  she's  fifty-four  if  she's  a  day.  She's  a  marvel."- 
"Fifty-four?"  cried  Tibby  in  amazement.  "I  would  have 
called  her  a  plump  thirty." — "Fifty-four,"  said  Mr.  Wil- 
cox, "and  she  cost  me  a  pair  of  boots.  Shall  I  see  you 
afterwards,  Quint?" — "I  think  not,"  said  Jamie.  "I 
have  my  sister-in-law  with  me." 

While  Jamie  and  Tibby  were  away  Agnes  seized  the 
opportunity  to  tackle  Hubert. — "Don't  you  think  it's  a 
pity?"  she  asked.— '"What ?"— "That  Jamie  should  throw 
himself  away  on  this  kind  of  thing?" — "Why  not?  He 
must  throw  himself  away  on  something." — "Why?" — 
"Because  he's  generous  and  the  rest  of  us  are  not."- 
"But  the  theatre?" — "It  is  a  will-o'-the-wisp  that  leads 
nowhere.  Jamie  is  the  kind  of  man  who  must  run  after 
a  will-o'-the-wisp,  and  another  might  lead  him  into  a 
bog." — "Do  you  think  him  a  genius?  He  is  certainly 
very  odd." — "I  think  he  might  have  been  a  genius  if  he 
had  been  born  into  any  other  family." — "Why  not  in 
ours?" — "Because  it  is  strong  and  believes  in  nothing 
but  safety." — "Then  he  must  be  very  unhappy."- 
"Dearest  Agnes,"  said  Hubert,  "which  of  us  is  happy?" 
— "I  mean,  he  could  be  happier  than  most  of  us."- 
"But  as  things  are  he  won't  be  and  the  best  thing  you 


MRS.  LESLIE  IN  DISTRESS  377 

can  do  for  him  is  to  find  him  a  wife,  get  him  away 
from  that  old  mother  of  his,  and  let  him  breed." — Agnes 
blushed  and  hid  her  face  in  her  fan.  She  was  used  to 
Hubert's  excesses  and  knew  how  to  flatter  him.  He  was 
pleased  and  went  on:  "It  isn't  the  least  use  being 
ashamed  of  the  breeding  instinct.  I  used  to  jeer  at  it 
but  in  the  end  I  had  to  satisfy  it  by  farming  and  even 
now  I  feel  rather  mean  at  getting  pigs,  horses,  cattle 
and  poultry  to  do  for  me  what  I  ought  to  have  done  for 
myself." — -"But  Jamie  has  so  much  imagination." — 
"Certainly,  and  it  wants  its  food,  which  in  a  family  like 
ours  it  does  not  get.  His  has  been  starved  and  is  not 
strong  enough  for  the  kind  of  work  he  is  trying  to  make 
it  do.  That  is  why  I  say  he  is  not  a  genius.  He  would 
have  got  away  years  ago  if  he  had  been." — "It  seems 
very  dreadful." — "It  is  very  dreadful,"  said  Hubert, 
"but  the  family  has  its  uses  and  cannot  take  overmuch 
account  of  the  individual.  In  the  long  run  the  individ- 
ual will  have  his  revenge." — "Weren't  you  yourself  in 
revolt  against  the  family?" — "O  yes.  I  rammed  my 
head  against  the  brick  wall  and  was  maimed  for  life. 
Jamie  is  quite  merciless.  He  hates  me  worse  even  than 
the  family.  He  thinks  I  don't  believe  in  him,  and  I 
don't." — '"Why  not?" — "From  my  own  experience.  If 
he  thinks  the  family,  as  all  institutions  do,  has  become 
a  tyrant  he  ought  not  to  compromise  over  it." — "It  is 
difficult  to  see  what  else  he  could  do." — "Exactly,  and 
a  genius  would  not  see  any  difficulty." — Agnes  smiled 
and  said :  "I  think  you  are  unfair  to  him  because  he  has 
seen  through  you,  Hubert.  I  think  he  sees  so  clearly 
that  a  very  little  action  is  all  he  needs.  I  believe  he  is 
a  genius  because  he  is  so  like  a  child  and  asks  nothing 
at  all  but  that  people  should  be  kind  to  him.  Tom  says 
he  is  conceited,  but  he  is  the  humblest  creature  I  ever 


3/3  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

met  and  I  am  very  fond  of  him,  as  well  as  sorry  for  him, 
and  this  kind  of  thing  seems  to  me  wrong  because  any- 
body else  could  do  it  as  well." 

Tibby  returned  then,  saying  that  Jamie  would  stay 
behind  for  the  rest  of  the  performance.  "He's  per- 
fectly miserable,"  she  said,  "and  I  would  like  to  take 
him  home." — "Why  is  he  miserable?"  asked  Agnes. — 
"He  would  not  say.  Indeed  he  said  nothing,  Mrs.  Tom, 
but  I  know  him.  He  cannot  take  his  pleasure  like  other 
folk.  You'd  think,  as  he  sat  here  so  glum,  it  was  a 
tragedy  on  the  stage,  and  he  used  strong  language  in 
the  Church  scene.  You'd  think  he  hated  the  players 
from  the  way  he  went  on  and  yet,  as  I've  told  you,  he 
cannot  keep  away  from  them.'' — "Does  he  do  any  writ- 
ing now?"  asked  Hubert. — "Only  what  you  see  in  the 
papers  and  every  now  and  then  a  little  poetry,  which 
he  tears  up." — "The  fact  of  the  matter  is,"  said  Hubert, 
"our  James  is  an  intellectual  without  intelligence  and 
he  should  have  been  a  professor." — "He  is  the  best  of 
men,"  said  Tibby,  "and  if  he  were  a  gaol-bird  he  would 
be  the  best  of  men,  for  that's  the  kind  of  man  he  is." 

At  the  end  of  the  play  there  was  great  applause,  which 
however  did  not  last  very  long.  There  was  nobody  in 
it  and  Hubert  grunted  dubiously. — "You  don't  think  it 
will  be  popular?"  asked  Agnes.  Hubert  grunted  again.— 
"Big  snobs  and  little  snobs,"  he  said.  "It's  no  good. 
You  can't  get  on  without  them.  There's  no  such  thing 
as  spontaneous  success.  It  must  be  to  a  certain  extent 
automatic.  Even  with  the  snobs  I  doubt  it.  The  Bea- 
trice is  a  clever-farceuse  but  she  is  too  old." — "I  hope 
Jamie  won't  be  disappointed  but  I  must  say  I  am  glad  it 
is  not  a  success." — "And  I,"  said  Tibby,  "thank  God 
for  it." — Hubert  laughed :  "You  think  there  is  nothing 
to  be  said  for  these  harlotry  players?" 


MRS.  LESLIE  IN  DISTRESS  379 

They  waited  for  Jamie  until  the  theatre  was  quite 
empty,  but  he  was  already  at  home  in  a  frenzy  writing 
his  notice  of  the  performance  of  Much  Ado  About  Noth- 
ing, words  which  had  taken  on  a  dreadful  significance 
for  him.  He  began  by  telling  the  story  of  the  play  and 
then  explained  that  he  had  had  to  turn  to  the  book  to 
discover  what  it  was,  since  the  performance  had  left 
him  in  some  doubt.  Then  he  went  on  to  show  what 
dignity  he  had  found  in  the  printed  page,  what  wit,  what 
raillery,  what  splendour  of  diction,  and  how  on  the  stage 
he  had  seen  a  rude  farce,  for  the  justification  of  which 
he  had  looked  in  vain. — "If  I  could  have  forgotten  my 
Shakespeare  I  might  have  enjoyed  a  splendid  perform- 
ance, but  I  could  not  forget  my  Shakespeare,  nor  could 
I  consent  to  his  work  being  presented  to  those  who  have 
not  read  it  in  so  debased  a  form.  They  may  like  it 
so  but  no  critic  worth  the  name  can  approve  their  liking 
it,  or  suffer  it  without  protest."  As  he  wrote  on  he 
forgot  that  he  had  had  anything  to  do  with  the  produc- 
tion and  praised  what  there  was  to  praise,  the  greater 
care  that  had  been  given  to  the  scenery,  dresses,  lighting 
and  production.  He  praised  Mr.  Wilcox  and  the  Don 
John  and  the  Benedick,  whom  he  commiserated  on  hav- 
ing the  wit  of  his  part  bludgeoned  out  of  existence  by  the 
Beatrice  with  her  rolling-pin,  who  cooked  her  jokes 
like  jam-tarts  and  hawked  them  two  a  penny. 

He  had  not  for  a  long  time  written  so  easily  or  so 
clearly.  He  had  neither  confusion  nor  doubt  as  to  his 
meaning.  It  was  the  old  gusto  again  and  he  felt  con- 
siderable satisfaction  in  signing  it  Quihtus  Flumen. 
Then  it  must  be  sent  off  at  once  to  The  Post  office  in 
time  to  have  a  proof.  He  packed  it  up  and  sent  it  off 
and  returned  just  as  Tibby  was  descending  at  the  gate 
from  Agnes'  fly. — "Thank  you  very  much,  Jamie,"  said 


380  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Agnes.  "It  was  a  most  entertaining  evening.  But  I 
hope  you  didn't  run  away  from  Hubert.  He  is  really 
very  fond  of  you." — "No,  my  dear,"  said  Jamie.  "I 
ran  away  from  the  play." — "Your  own  play?  I  think 
you  ought  to  stand  up  for  your  own." — "Even  if  it  is 
abominable?" — "It's  too  late  to  argue  now.  Will  you 
come  and  see  me  soon?" — "I  will  very  soon.  I've  been 
a  little  afraid  of  you." — "You  need  never  be  that.  Good- 
night. "—"Good-night." 

Tibby  was  very  stern  with  him. — "Where  have  you 
been?"  she  asked. — "To  the  post.  I — I  wanted  a  little 
air." — '"Why  do  you  go  among  the  players,  if  you  hate 
them  so  much,  Jamie?" — "It  isn't  the  players.  It's  the 
theatre.  It  gets  into  my  blood.  I'm  full  of  it,  always 
expecting  something  from  it."  He  was  very  excited 
and  she  commented  on  it:  "You're  not  yourself  to- 
night, Jamie." — "No,"  he  said,  "I  think  I've  been  over- 
doing it.  I'm  not  myself  and  that's  the  fact.  There'll 
be  no  sleep  for  me  for  hours  and  I'd  be  pleased  if  you'd 
come  and  talk  to  me;  none  of  your  shy  hovering  at  the 
door  but  a  real  sit-down  talk." — Tibby  followed  him  up 
to  his  room.  They  listened  outside  Margaret's  door  but 
there  was  no  sound. 

Jamie  lit  the  lamp  and  suggested  that  they  should 
have  tea.  Tibby  stole  downstairs  to  the  kitchen  and 
came  back  with  two  cups. — "That's  good!"  said  Jamie. 
"Do  you  think  I'm  a  terrible  fool,  Tibby?" — "I  have  no 
decided  opinion  about  you,"  said  she,  "but  I  have  my 
hopes."— "That  I'll  be  a  fool?"^"No.  That  you'll  be 
as  good  a  man  as  your  mother." — "Aye,  she  is  fine,  and 
I  must  be  a  sore  trial  to  her." — "Nay.  She's  pleased 
now  to  think  of  you  in  the  bank." — "Ah!  That's  it, 
Tibby.  That's  where  I'm  the  fool,  to  want  the  theatre  to 
be  as  good  for  its  work  as  the  bank." — "You'll  never  get 


MRS.  LESLIE  IN  DISTRESS  381 

that." — "Why  not?" — '"Because  play-acting's  an  off-time 
thing." — "Not  for  the  people  whose  work  it  is."- 
"They've  got  to  take  the  mood  of  the  people  they  have 
to  do  their  tricks  before,  and  they're  all  tired  people." 
— "But  they  ought  not  to  be  tired." — "And  yet  they  are. 
It's  been  an  easy  thing  for  you  to  get  your  living,  Jamie, 
though  I  will  say  that  I  never  knew  you  take  things 
easily,  but  for  most  of  us  living  is  hard.  We're  not  all 
happy  in  ourselves  as  you  are  mostly  in  yourself,  and 
we  shrink  from  any  little  extra  suffering  or  from  any 
extra  effort." — Jamie  thought  that  over  for  awhile. 
There  seemed  to  him  to  be  some  truth  in  it  and  he  asked : 
"Are  you  speaking  for  yourself,  or  only  from  what  you 
think  ?"— "It's  true  of  me  too,"  said  Tibby.  "I  often 
think  you  never  realise  what  other  people  are  going 
through  because  you  go  through  things  so  quickly  your- 
self. We  can't.  We're  slow  and  helpless." — "You're 
not  slow,  Tibby.  My  mind  never  jumps  so  fast  but  you 
are  there  before  me  and  I  must  say  this  of  you  that 
you  never  leave  anything  behind.  Very  often  I  move 
so  fast — in  my  mind,  I  mean,  and  my  feelings — that  I 
seem  to  leave  everything  behind  and  to  forget  not  only 
what  men  are  doing  but  what  they  are.  It's  an  amazing 
freedom  that  I  get  there,  but  I  can  do  nothing  with  it 
and  I  have  to  come  back  wearily.  And  yet  always  when 
I  do  come  back  to  things  as  they  go  slowly  grinding  on 
I  know  that  I  simply  cannot  live  among  them.  I  won- 
der sometimes  if  I  am  wicked,  but  if  I  were  wicked  I 
couldn't  be  sitting  here  talking  to  you  as  I  am  now.  All 
I  feel  is  that  everything  is  too  close  here  in  this  place; 
people  are  too  close  to  each  other,  and  yet  what  worlds 
away!  our  ideas  are  too  close:  God,  the  kind  of  God 
my  mother  still  believes  in,  is  too  close.  I  feel  that  we're 
fast  losing  something,  some  idea  maybe,  or  some  power 


382  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

of  communication  one  with  another.  It  means  more  to 
me,  I  know,  to  see  you  or  to  feel  your  presence  in  a 
room  than  to  talk  to  any  other  living  soul.  There's  life 

in  that "—"Oh!  Jamie!     Oh!  Jamie!"  cried  Tibby. 

and  he  felt  a  strange  tingling  and  throbbing  in  his  breast. 
She  was  trembling. — "Tibby,"  he  said,  "for  God's  sake 
what  is  it?  Have  I  hurt  you?  Have  I  been  talking 
blethers?" — She  had  risen  from  her  chair  and  she  stood 
looking  down  at  him,  her  curious  veiled  eyes  shining.— 
"You  arc  a  fool,  Jamie,"  she  said.  "Much  thinking  has 
made  you  a  fool  and  may  God  forgive  you.'' — He  stood 
and  confronted  her: — "Tibby!"  he  said.  "Tell  me  what 
it  is.  Tell  me,  for  I'm  sick  to  death  of  being  the  kind 
of  fool  I  am." — "It  would  harm  us  both  if  I  told  you," 
said  she,  "so  I'll  haud  my  tongue.  I'm  used  to  that." 
So  saying,  she  left  him  and  he  sank  back  into  his  chair 
with  the  tingling  and  throbbing  in  his  breast  turned  to  a 
dull  ache.  For  an  hour  or  more  he  sat  blankly  staring 
in  front  of  him.  He  was  not  insensible  of  the  torment 
in  Tibby  but  he  was  numbed  by  the  stab  of  the  fierce 
instinct  in  her,  and  mentally  confused  by  the  tenderness 
in  her  which  had  not  for  a  moment  failed  him.  And 
suddenly  he  was  the  victim  of  a  violent  eruption  of 
feeling,  that  seemed  to  have  no  object  but  to  destroy 
his  being.  It  was  an  agony  but  he  shrank  from  no 
moment  of  it,  feeling  all  the  dissatisfactions  of  years 
being  rent  from  him.  He  was  left  with  small  imme- 
diate consciousness.  Suppressed  desires,  distorted  and 
abused  desires  came  up  in  a  vile  flood  thrusting  their 
way  through  the  shell  of  his  being,  darkening  his  mind, 
freezing  his  heart.  He  could  find  no  relief  but  in  mov- 
ing slowly  about  the  room.  It  was  a  comfort  and  a 
reassurance  to  touch  things,  the  curtains.  Many  times 
he  pulled  the  blinds  up  and  down.  He  extinguished 


MRS.  LESLIE  IN  DISTRESS  383 

the  lamp,  lit  it  again  and  once  more  extinguished  it. 
He  broke  a  heavy  ivory  paper-knife  into  five  pieces  and 
cut  his  hand  in  doing  so.  At  last  dawn  came  and  he 
stood  at  the  window  watching  the  coming  of  the  light 
from  grey  to  pearl  and  pearl  to  red  in  the  sky,  noting 
the  changes  with  a  cold  exactness  and  precision  until 
at  last  another  day  enormous  and  abominably  empty 
had  begun.  It  was  the  vastness  and  emptiness  of  the 
day  that  Jamie  felt.  It  must  be  filled  and  his  mind 
began  to  cast  about  for  his  means  of  filling  it :  break- 
fast, work  at  the  bank,  dinner,  work  at  the  bank,  tea, 
conversation  with  his  mother.  He  went  into  all  that 
in  detail  and  heaped  it  up  but  still  the  day  seemed  very 
empty:  a  sieve  of  a  day.  He  poured  into  it  all  the 
activities  he  had  ever  known,  the  activities  of  the  thou- 
sands in  the  great  city;  all  his  pleasures,  all  his  loves, 
all  his  happiness  and  all  his  sorrow,  and  still  the  day 
was  very  empty.  At  last  he  shrugged  his  shoulders  and 
told  himself  that  he  had  nothing  more  to  cast  away  and 
was  miraculously  still  alive.  Then  he  went  up  to  his 
bed  and  lay  down  and  slept  for  a  couple  of  hours,  de- 
liberately and  consciously  put  himself  to  sleep  because 
he  needed  it,  and  felt  that,  as  nothing  worse  could  pos- 
sibly happen,  he  had  the  right  to  so  much  refreshment. 
In  the  morning  there  were  several  letters  for  him, 
one  from  Mrs.  Leslie  which  ran:  "My  DEAR  JAMIE,— 
For  I  always  shall  call  you  Jamie  in  spite  of  what  has 
happened.  Will  you  excuse  me  asking  you  to  come  and 
see  me,  but  I  am  in  some  trouble.  Mr.  Leslie  has  been 
asked  to  retire  from  the  firm  and  I  don't  know  what- 
ever we  shall  do.  It  isn't  as  if  he  was  a  young  man 
but  we  can  talk  of  all  that  when  you  come,  which  please 
do  soon,  as  Mr.  Leslie  will  let  no  one  come  to  the 
house  and  I  have  no  one  to  talk  to." — '"Tom's  work," 


384  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

said  Jamie  as  he  read  this  letter  over  a  second  time.— 
Margaret  handed  him  his  coffee,  saying:  "You're  look- 
ing very  well  this  morning,  Jamie.  John  writes  from 
Madeira  to  say  that  he  and  Sophia  are  so  enchanted 
with  the  place  that  they  will  stay  there,  perhaps  until  the 
spring.  They  are  sending  me  some  Madeira  lace  and 
I  must  say  that  John  is  very  generous.  Sophia  has 
been  very  good  for  him  in  that  way." — "My  letter," 
said  Jamie,  "is  from  Mrs.  Leslie.  She  tells  me  that  her 
husband  has  been  dismissed  from  the  firm. "--"Yes," 
said  Margaret,  "it  does  seem  a  pity.  Tom  told  me  some 
time  since  that  he  would  have  to  go." 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

ACOMB   TO   THE   RESCUE 


THAT  evening,  when  he  left  the  bank,  Jamie  took 
the  way  that  he  had  gone  every  day  when  he  had 
first  entered  his  uncle's  office.  There  was  no  change 
in  the  streets  but  for  the  worse,  yet  he  no  longer  re- 
sented deterioration;  it  no  longer  fretted  his  nerves. 
He  could  face  the  squalor  in  the  mean  streets  as  he 
had  faced  the  squalor  in  himself,  and  both  seemed  to 
him  part  of  the  same  evil  against  which  it  was  his  clear 
and  joyous  duty  to  fight.  In  responding  to  that  duty 
liberty  stirred  in  his  heart.  That  day,  as  he  had  lived 
it,  had  been  full  to  brimming  over,  though  it  had  con- 
tained nothing  that  there  had  not  been  in  countless 
days  before  it.  It  had  been  like  no  other  day  in  all 
his  life;  not  even  the  wonderful  joyous  days  of  his  boy- 
hood had  been  so  full.  Everyone  had  responded  a  little 
to  the  zest  in  him  and  he  had  found  it  so  easy  to  enter 
into  all  the  little  jokes  of  the  bank,  though  where  the 
others  laughed  uproariously  he  could  never  give  more 
than  a  dry  chuckle.  The  business  of  the  day  had  seemed 
to  him  more  than  ever  trivial  and  unduly  intricate,  ex- 
cessively slow  and  indolent,  but  none  the  less  worth 
doing  well  and  carefully.  It  absorbed  very  little  energy 
and  he  had  plenty  of  leisure  for  thinking  of  other  things 
and  for  considering  the  possibility  of  changes  that  he 

385 


386  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

could  bring  about  in  his  life,  so  that  he  could  taste  more 
of  this  new  liberty  that  had  come  so  suddenly  as  to 
seem  Heaven-sent.  It  had  the  very  magic  of  poetry, 
and  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  feeling  as  poets  feel, 
with  a  joy  beyond  all  pleasure,  with  no  thought  of 
pleasure  in  the  free  activity  of  love.  He  could  love 
even  evil,  since  from  the  strife  of  good  and  evil  in 
himself  as  in  all  things  came  this  joy,  which  forbade 
nothing  and  excluded  nothing. 

He  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  look  back  on 
the  small,  conceited,  egoistic  and  most  unhappy  self  that 
he  had  left  behind.  That  self  had  often  tasted  the  pleas- 
ure of  feeling  virtuous,  which  was  most  absurdly  like 
the  pleasure  of  feeling  wicked;  it  had  often  tasted  the 
delight  of  an  eruption  of  blind  instinct,  which  it  had 
called  passion,  impotent  and  futile,  producing  nothing 
in  the  end  but  disgust.  But  now  it  was  as  though  his 
instincts  had  been  given  sight.  They  were  eager.  They 
poured,  thrilling  through  all  his  senses,  quickening  them 
so  that  his  joy  was  no  more  confined  within  himself  but 
could  pass  out  into  all  that  he  could  see  and  touch  and 
smell,  withdrawing  before  all  offence  or  reaching  through 
it  to  understand  it  and  to  know  its  nature. 

As  he  walked  by  the  old  way  he  could  meet  his  younger 
self,  who  had  suffered  in  his  unwitting  desire  for  this 
very  thing,  this  fulness  of  a  day.  It  was  good  to  be 
going  back  to  Mrs.  Leslie  who  had  done  so  much  to  make 
those  old  times  bearable.  It  was  good  to  go  back  with 
this  first  fulfilment  to  the  scenes  of  the  innocent  young 
desire. 

Mrs.  Leslie  opened  the  door  to  him  herself.  Trouble? 
There  was  no  sign  of  it  upon  her  face,  in  her  ready  smile 
and  her  child-like  eyes  that  had  surely  seen  no  evil  any- 
where and  in  all  that  has  passed  before  them  had  found 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  387 

only  food  for  gaiety. — "He!  He!  Jamie,"  she  said.  "It 
is  good  of  you  to  come  at  once." — "Of  course  I  should 
come  at  once." — "He!  He!  I  knew  you  would." 

She  led  him  into  her  little  parlour,  not,  he  knew,  be- 
cause he  was  a  ceremonious  visitor,  but  because  she 
wished  to  have  him  alone.  She  said :  "I  thought  I  could 
bear  it  until  Sunday,  but  when  Mr.  Leslie  refused  to  go  to 
church  then  I  couldn't  bear  it  any  longer.  He  hasn't 
missed  church  on  Sunday  for  fifteen  years,  not  since  he's 
been  churchwarden.  I  wouldn't  mind  anything.  I  never 
did  mind  anything  that  happens,  for  when  one  door  shuts 
another  door  opens.  I  was  always  a  puzzle  to  Mr.  Leslie, 
being  so  cheerful,  and  now  he  can't  understand  me  at 
all.  He  just  sits  there  and  won't  go  out  until  after  dark 
and  if  I  make  a  suggestion  he  snaps  my  head  off.  We 
shall  have  to  leave  this  house  because  of  the  rent  but  he 
won't  hear  a  word  of  it.  And  at  night  when  I  used  to  get 
something  out  of  him  he  just  lies  silent  as  the  night." 
—"When  did  it  happen,"  asked  Jamie,  "and  how?" — 
"A  fortnight  ago.  They  had  told  him  three  months 
before  but  he  never  said  a  word  of  it  to  me.  He  came 
home  a  fortnight  ago  and  said  the  office  had  no  further 
use  for  his  services.  Then  it  was  days  before  I  could 
get  anything  more  out  of  him.  They  have  given  him  his 
salary  up  to  the  end  of  the  year,  which  is  generous  con- 
sidering that  they  need  not  have  given  him  anything." — 
"They'd  had  his  work  for  thirty  years  and  more." — 
"Thirty-two  years.  He  was  very  proud  of  that,  but  he 
can't  think  of  anything  else.  I  can't  do  anything  with 
him.  He  says  I  have  never  understood  him  and  I  thought 
if  you  could  do  something.  He  used  to  be  fond  of  you 
in  the  old  days." — "Will  you  ask  him  to  see  me?" — 
"I'd  rather  you  went  in  yourself.  I've  always  found 
that  the  only  way  is  to  take  him  by  surprise.  He!  He! 


388  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

That's  why  he's  so  fond  of  me,  because  I'm  always  a 
surprise  to  him." 

Jamie  went  along  to  the  dining-room  where  he  found 
Mr.  Leslie  sitting  in  his  old  easy-chair,  cowering  before 
the  fire  and  reading  the  advertisements  in  the  news- 
paper column  by  column.  When  he  saw  Jamie  he  turned 
over  the  page  to  the  notice  of  the  production  of  Much 
Ado  About  Nothing. — "Good-evening,"  said  Jamie. — 
"Good-evening,"  said  Mr.  Leslie,  "and  what  brings  you 
here?" — -"My  old  friends,"  replied  Jamie,  "old  friends 
are  best."  He  winced  at  once  at  the  tactlessness  of  his 
own  remark.  But  it  did  not  seem  to  wound  Mr.  Leslie, 
who  was  in  a  bewildered  apathy. — "I  was  thinking  of 
the  old  days,"  said  Jamie,  "and  I  thought  I  would  come 
and  take  you  out  for  a  walk.  We  used  to  enjoy  our 
walks  in  the  old  days." — "I've  changed  my  habits,"  re- 
torted Mr.  Leslie,  "I  used  to  enjoy  a  walk  of  a  Sunday, 
but  all  days  are  Sundays  now." — "Then  come  and  enjoy 
a  walk."— "I  couldn't." 

There  was  a  long  and  very  awkward  silence  which 
Jamie  at  last  broke  by  saying  lamely :  "I  think  it  would 
be  a  good  thing."  Mr.  Leslie  had  reduced  him  to  impo- 
tence and  he  chafed  against  it.  He  felt  that  if  only 
he  could  get  the  wretched  man  out  of  doors  he  would 
be  able  to  do  something  with  him.  Sitting  there,  he  was 
in  a  strongly  fortified  position.  The  easy-chair  was  the 
throne  from  which  he  had  exercised  his  sovereign  power 
over  his  family.  He  had  taken  refuge  in  it  now  and 
resented  Jamie's  suggestion  as  an  attempt  to  drive  him 
out. — "Come,  come,"  said  Jamie.  "Let  us  be  friends." 
— "Not,"  said  Mr.  Leslie,  "with  any  member  of  your 
family.  For  thirty  years  and  more  I've  worked  for 
your  family,  that  your  uncle  and  your  brother  may  live 
in  luxury  and  that  you  may  waste  your  life  in  sinful 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  389 

courses.  You  were  the  ruin  of  my  daughter,  James 
Lawrie,  but  I  believed  in  the  firm.  I  always  have  believed 
in  the  firm  and  I  find  it  hard  not  to  believe  in  the  firm 
now." — 'Jamie  received  this  onslaught  with  a  gulp.  That 
he  had  been  the  ruin  of  Selina  was,  from  Peter's  point 
of  view,  true  enough,  though  not  at  all  true  from  Selina's. 
However,  Peter  did  not  admit  that  Selina  had  a  point 
of  view,  or,  indeed,  an  existence.  According  to  his  no- 
tions Jamie  had  put  an  end  to  that  as  surely  as  Tom 
had  put  an  end  to  his  connection  with  the  firm.  He  was 
completely  baffled.  Such  things  do  not  happen  to  a 
churchwarden.  The  mere  fact  of  being  a  churchwarden 
ought  to  have  made  them  impossible.  And  yet  they  had 
happened  and  he  simply  could  not  understand  it.  If 
there  were  any  justice  in  Heaven,  as  there  was  certainly 
none  on  earth,  the  Lawries  ought  to  be  struck  dead, 
and  for  his  effrontery  in  coming  to  see  him,  Mr.  Leslie 
half  expected  the  finger  of  God  to  touch  James  Lawrie 
as  he  sat  by  the  table  in  the  dining-room. 

Jamie  could  feel  the  man  aching  and  throbbing  with 
injured  vanity  and  a  helpless  rage  at  being  deprived  of 
the  habits  which  through  so  many  years  had  carried  him 
on  from  day  to  day.  At  the  same  time  he  realised  how 
entirely  inaccessible  the  unhappy  Peter  was  to  any  sym- 
pathy that  might  be  given  him.  He  had  repulsed  even 
his  wife.  What  then  could  an  outsider  do?  The  only 
thing  Jamie  could  think  of  was  to  get  him  out  of  the 
easy-chair. — "I  should  have  thought,"  he  said  kindly, 
"that  you  would  have  been  glad  of  your  independence." 
Peter  sat  bolt  upright: — "I  have  always  been  independ- 
ent," he  snapped.  "That  is  the  trouble.  I  have  been 
independent  in  my  politics,  in  my  religion,  and  I  have 
been  master  in  my  own  house,  as  you  ought  to  know, 
having  lived  here  when  you  were  a  boy  and  I  did  my 


390  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

best  to  discharge  my  responsibility  to  your  uncle,  who, 
if  he  had  been  alive,  would  never  have  tolerated  the 
things  that  are  being  done  in  his  business  to-day.  I  have 
never  asked  for  help  and  never  will,  neither  will  I  brook 
any  interference  in  my  affairs." — "I  had  no  intention  of 
interfering,"  replied  Jamie.  "I  certainly  think  you  have 
been  treated  very  badly  and  I  only  wished  to  offer  you 
such  help  as  I  can  give  if  you  have  any  intention  of 
finding  other  work." — "I  am  quite  capable  of  applying 
for  work  when  it  is  wanted."  His  rage  suddenly  boiled 
over.  "The  firm  offered  to  keep  me  on  with  my  work 
taken  away  from  me  and  given  to  another  man.  Charity ! 
If  I  could  pay  them  back  every  penny  I  have  ever  had 
from  them,  I  would.  If  I  were  a  younger  man,  I  would 
work  myself  to  the  bone  until  I  had  paid  them  back." — 
"But  they  could  not  pay  you  back  the  work  you  have 
done." — "If  it  had  been  work  for  righteous  men  I  could 
not  regret  one  moment  of  it,  but  for  men  like  you,  like 
your  brother  ..."  He  had  risen  from  his  chair  and 
Jamie  stood  also.  He  was  shocked  to  see  how  thin  and 
old  Peter  looked.  Peter  had  lost  even  his  trim  spruce- 
ness.  He  was  a  figure  of  weak  inarticulate  fury.  After 
a  moment  or  two  he  seemed  to  feel  his  weakness  and  he 
sank  back  into  his  chair  again,  took  up  the  newspaper 
and  began  once  more  to  read  the  advertisements.  So, 
sick  at  heart,  Jamie  left  him. 

There  could  not  have  been  a  more  complete  apparent 
denial  of  the  joy  that  had  so  recently  possessed  him  and 
that  he  had  believed  to  be  omnipotent.  It  had  failed  him. 
It  had  failed  to  give  him  power  to  break  through  the 
unhappy  Peter's  misery,  and  yet  through  the  encounter 
it  had  become  active  and  fierce:  no  longer  a  sweet  easy 
condition,  but  almost  a  pain,  which  was  redoubled  as 
Mrs.  Leslie  came  out  of  the  parlour.  He  said: — "I  can 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  391 

do  nothing  with  him,  but  for  you  there  is  nothing  that  I 
will  not  try  to  do."  And  he  almost  broke  into  sobs  when 
the  little  woman  seized  his  hand  and  kissed  it. — "It's  my 
fault,"  said  she.  "I  can't  help  trying  to  be  cheerful, 
whatever  happens,  and  it  does  aggravate  him  so."  Her 
words  made  Jamie  want  to  laugh  through  his  sorrow. 
He  patted  Mrs.  Leslie's  cheek  and  told  her  that  she  must 
be  cheerful  even  if  it  drove  Peter  off  his  head,  as  of 
course  it  would  not,  because  he  would  soon  discover  that 
she  was  worth  more  than  all  the  big  firms  in  Thrigsby 
put  together. — "He !  He !  Jamie,"  said  Mrs.  Leslie,  mop- 
ping at  her  eyes  with  a  child's  stocking  she  had  produced 
from  her  pocket,  "I  declare  you  haven't  changed  a  bit. 
You  are  the  same  boy  that  came  here  all  those  years  ago." 
When  he  left  her  Jamie  walked  straight  over  to  Tom's 
house  and  asked  to  see  Agnes.  She  received  him  in  the 
little  room  they  called  the  breakfast-room,  though  they 
never  had  breakfast  in  it.  He  came  straight  to  the  point 
and  told  her  of  Tom's  treatment  of  Peter  Leslie.  Did 
she  know? — No.  Tom  never  told  her  anything  about 
his  work.  The  Greigs  had  never  told  their  wives  any- 
thing either,  so  she  had  not  expected  it,  and  thought  it 
must  be  very  difficult. — "How  do  you  think  it  can  be 
difficult  if  Tom  can  succeed  in  it?" — "I  wonder  why  you 
and  Tom  can  never  admit  each  other's  ability?"  asked 
Agnes. — "Ability  is  comparative  and  Tom's  is  not  su- 
preme. I  don't  see  that  that,  is  disparaging." — "Very 
well,  then,  business  is  quite  easy  but  I  don't  suppose  I 
should  find  it  interesting." — >"Do  you  find  anything  in- 
teresting?"— "O!  yes.  Being  happy  is  so." — "I  find 
that  it  depends  upon  the  quality  of  the  happiness  and 
happiness  for  its  own  sake  is  only  a  pleasant  form  of 
boredom.  But  I  want  something  done  for  the  Leslies. 
He  has  his  salary  to  the  end  of  the  year  and  then  noth- 


392  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

ing  or  next  door  to  it.  He  cannot  have  saved  much 
with  a  wife  and  seven  children  to  keep:' — "I  will  ask 
Tom." — "I  have  no  hope  of  Tom.  He  will  be  official 
and  say  that  as  an  employer  he  knows  nothing  of  Leslie's 
wife  and  family  and  has  no  interest  in  the  way  in  which 
his  employees  choose  to  spend  their  salaries.  I  say  and 
I  want  you  to  say  that  Leslie  is  entitled  to  a  pension  or 
at  least  to  some  small  charge  on  the  firm's  profits."-  -"I 
will  certainly  say  so,  but  it  will  make  Tom  very  angry." 
— "I  don't  see  why  you  should  mind  making  him  angry." 
— '"But  I  do.  I'll  help  the  Leslies  myself  if  they  need 
help." — "They  don't.  They  want  justice."  Jamie  was 
really  angry  with  Agnes'  placidity.  She  seemed  to  be 
incapable  of  imagining  that  there  could  be  injustice  in 
the  dismissal  of  a  clerk,  who  was  apparently  only  a  part 
of  the  machinery  of  an  office,  to  be  kept  in  working 
order  while  useful,  and  to  be  dismissed  when  no  longer 
so.  The  office  was  something  entirely  remote  from 
Agnes'  life.  It  swallowed  up  Tom  every  morning  and 
returned  him  between  six  and  seven  in  the  evening.  It 
had  besides  some  mysterious  function  in  the  mainte- 
nance of  Thrigsby  which  the  Greigs,  with  some  assistance 
from  the  Keiths,  had  created  and  established  for  ever. 
And  because  the  Greigs  and  Keiths  had  created  and  es- 
tablished Thrigsby  Tom,  being  a  connection,  was  to  ex- 
tract from  it  large  sums  of  money.  He  did  this  through 
an  office,  and  she  did  not  really  conceive  that  Tom  worked 
or  that  it  could  be  necessary. 

All  this  from  her  conversation  Jamie  roughly  divined 
and  he  recognised  the  spirit  which  in  old  Andrew  had 
caused  him  to  revolt  and  in  the  Greigs  made  the  atmos- 
phere of  their  homes  absolutely  asphyxiating.  He  thought 
he  could  detect  it  here  in  Tom's  house  and  that  did  a 
little  account  to  his  mind  for  the  dismissal  of  Peter  Les- 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  393 

lie.  Also,  he  was  bound  to  admit,  Agnes'  theory  of 
Thrigsby  and  the  office  was  to  a  certain  extent  borne  out 
by  the  facts.  It  was  really  false  only  in  the  assumption! 
that  the  Keiths  and  the  Greigs,  and  perhaps  the  Allisons, 
had  created  and  established  Thrigsby,  for  there  were  at 
least  a  hundred  other  families  living  serenely  under  the 
same  impression,  and  very  proud  of  it  too.  The  fact  that 
they  were  rich  seemed  to  prove  it.  They  were  rich  be- 
cause they  had  conferred  benefits  on  their  fellow-men, 
who  showed  small  gratitude  and  much  envy. 

It  was  a  new  side  of  Agnes  and  Jamie  was  puzzled 
by  it,  for  it  did  not  diminish  his  old  admiration  and  love 
for  her.  They  remained,  but  this  new  aspect  made  him 
understand  why  he  had  held  aloof  from  and  idealised 
her.  That  strange  hardness  in  her  was  repellent  to  love, 
which  could  only  gain  access  to  her  through  persistent 
violence.  All  her  rare  and  beautiful  qualities  were  inac- 
tive. She  was  static  and  would  never  be  either  old  or 
young,  never  pitying,  never  compassionate,  never  sympa- 
thetic, but  always  easy,  kind  and  charitable.  In  its  way 
it  was  as  tragic  as  Peter  Leslie.  And  here  too  was  inac- 
cessibility to  joy. — 'Tm  in  no  luck  to-day,"  thought 
Jamie  humorously,  and  he  began  to  see  himself  as  rather 
absurd.  However,  he  felt  that  he  owed  justice  to  Peter 
and  stayed  on  until  Tom  came  home.  Then  he  let  fly, 
pleading  his  cause  eloquently  and  moderately,  so  as  to 
leave  no  loophole  for  an  accusation  of  prejudice.  Tom 
heard  him  out  to  the  end. — "You  can't  expect  us  to 
pension  a  clerk  of  ours  merely  because  he  is  a  friend  of 
yours.  Every  clerk  in  our  office  knows  that  we  have  no 
pension  fund  and  pensions  are  bad  in  principle ;  they  dis- 
courage thrift  and  enterprise  and  encourage  slackness. 
On  the  other  hand,  while  our  clerks  behave  themselves, 
they  know  that  they  are  as  safe  as  if  they  were  in  the 


394  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Bank  of  England.  As  for  Leslie,  the  fact  is  that  he  is 
past  his  work  and  ought  really  to  have  retired  when 
Andrew  died.  Uncle  Andrew  ought  to  have  left  him  a 
small  legacy  upon  which  he  could  have  retired  quietly 
without  all  this  fuss.  As  it  is  we  kept  him  on  until  re- 
construction made  it  imperative  that  he  and  one  or  two 
others  should  go.  He  could  have  stayed  on  and  made 
himself  useful  in  a  number  of  small  ways,  but  he  pre- 
ferred to  go.  If  we  give  him  a  pension  then  the  other 
clerks  will  expect  the  same  and  the  firm  cannot  afford  it." 
— "Put  in  the  name  of  justice." — "Justice?  He  has  no 
claim  on  us.  He  has  been  paid  for  his  service.  He  has 
nothing  to  complain  of  on  that  score." — 'That  sounds 
to  me  more  like  law  than  justice." — "My  dear  James,  the 
law  of  the  land  and  of  the  time  in  which  you  live  is 
justice.  Only  a  knave  or  a  fool  will  look  beyond  it." — 
"Then  the  world  owes  its  progress  to  knaves  and  fools." 
— "Possibly.  All  right-thinking  men  are  content  with  the 
world  as  it  is." — "And  to  leave  honest  men  to  starve." 
— "What  nonsense?  We  are  quite  ready  to  give  Leslie 
the  warmest  recommendation  for  any  position  he  may 
apply  for.  And  he  must  have  saved." — "With  seven 
children  ?" — "Our  mother  brought  us  up  on  ninety  pounds 
a  year  and  I  beg  you  to  remember  what  her  feelings  were 
about  her  pension." — "It  is  not  the  money  that  Leslie  is 
worrying  about.  He  has  been  hurt  in  his  devotion  to  the 
firm." — "That  is  sentiment.  There  is  no  longer  room 
for  sentiment  in  business.  You  ought  to  know  that. 
Every  penny  counts  nowadays  and  there  is  no  room  for 
luxury  or  leisure.  The  whole  affair  has  been  very  pain- 
ful to  me,  but  it  became  clear  that  as  long  as  Leslie 
stayed  there  was  no  getting  the  full  amount  of  work 
out  of  the  other  clerks."^-"  And  also,  I  suppose,"  re- 
marked Jamie  sarcastically,  "he  was  grossly  overpaid." 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  395 

— "The  salary  list  has  been  revised,  certainly." — "In- 
cluding yours?" — -"I  am  not  a  salaried  partner.  The 
salaried  partners  have  been  subject  to  the  revision.  I 
wish  you  would  believe  me  when  I  assure  you  that  you 
are  wasting  your  time.  These  people  always  have  griev- 
ances. There  are  men  in  this  town  who  devote  their 
whole  lives  to  the  venting  of  grievances,  and  pestiferous 
nuisances  they  are.  I  hope  you  are  not  going  to  become 
one  of  those.  You  had  much  better  stick  to  your  rogues 
and  vagabonds." — Jamie  swallowed  the  implied  insult 
cheerfully : — "Very  well  then,"  he  said.  "Will  you  give 
me  the  three  hundred  pounds  you  owe  me?" — "What 
three  hundred?" — "You  offered  fifteen  hundred  for  Cli- 
bran  and  gave  me  twelve  hundred." — "Not  at  all.  You 
insisted  on  the  surveyor,  and  besides  you  sold  Clibran 
to  Agnes,  not  to  me." — "Will  you  give  me  the  three  hun- 
dred then,  Agnes?" — "Certainly,"  said  she. — "I  forbid 
it,"  cried  Tom.  "I  forbid  it.  I  forbid  you  to  entrust 
a  single  farthing  to  this  fellow  who  has  no  sense  of  the 
value  of  money  and  no  respect  for  it."  Jamie  saw  Agnes 
flush  with  pleasure  as  Tom's  voice  grew  louder  and  loud- 
er. She  enjoyed  being  bullied  by  him,  revelled  in  it.  She* 
was  afraid  of  him  and  delighted  in  her  fear.  For  two 
or  three  minutes  she  let  him  rail  on  and  then  she  said 
meekly:  "Yes,  Tom."  And  Tom  shook  himself  like  a 
dog  that  has  growled  at  another  dog  smaller  than  itself 
and  frightened  it  away.  Then  he  turned  to  his  brother 
and  said  magnanimously:  "Of  course,  if  Leslie  finds 
himself  in  real  difficulties  we  will  do  what  we  can  for 
him."  Tom's  face  adopted  the  expression  he  wore  when 
he  was  feeling  virtuous,  which  was  his  greatest  and  most 
constant  pleasure  and  was  gained  chiefly  in  the  contem- 
plation of  the  wickedness,  the  folly  or  the  recklessness 
of  others.  Now  he  had  two  causes  for  it :  Leslie's  crim- 


396  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

inally  rash  declaration  of  independence  and  Jamie's  wild 
espousal  of  the  cause  of  his  inferior.  Add  to  that  his 
successful  squashing  of  his  wife,  and  he  had  good  reason 
to  be  self-satisfied.  Thomas  Lawrie  was  master  in  his 
own  house  and  his  own  business ;  "come  the  four  corners 
of  the  world  in  arms"  and  he  would  shock  them.  He 
straddled  his  legs  in  front  of  the  fire,  parting  his  coat- 
tails  to  warm  the  backs  of  his  thighs. — "I  am  not  an  un- 
generous man,"  he  said  in  a  surprisingly  gentle  voice, 
while  Jamie  and  Agnes  on  either  side  stared  up  at  him : 
"I  am  not  an  ungenerous  man,  I  hope,  but  I  have  my 
principles,  and  I  believe  that  every  man  should  look 
after  himself  and  not  look  to  others  for  support  in  any 
crisis.  If  a  man  is  honest,  thrifty  and  puts  his  trust  in 
God  he  should  have  no  difficulty.  If  he  fails  in  any  of 
these  then  he  should  face  the  consequences  without 
squealing." — "Have  done!"  cried  Jamie  unable  to  bear  it 
any  longer.  "If  there  ever  was  a  thrifty,  honest  and 
pious  man  it  is  poor  Leslie  and,  though  you  refuse  to  see 
it,  he  has  deserved  better  at  your  hands.  What  you  do 
with  all  your  money  or  what  you  want  with  it,  I  don't 
know,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  it's  as  much  a  dead  end  with 
you  as  poverty  is  to  the — to  the  men  you  have  impover- 
ished." With  that  he  stalked  out  of  the  room  and  the 
house.  Tom  had  become  entirely  and  intolerably  fantastic 
to  him.  His  own  brother !  Tom,  whom  he  remembered 
as  an  eager  ambitious  boy,  come  down  to  smug  scratch- 
ing of  his  own  virtue,  with  his  honesty,  and  his  thrift 
and  his  trust  in  God !  Nay,  that  was  more  tragic  than 
Peter  in  his  easy-chair.  Peter  was  but  a  poor,  tame 
frightened  man  at  the  best,  but  Tom  had  had  pride  and 
vigour. — "I  will  not  believe  it,"  said  Jamie  to  himself. 
"I'll  not  believe  it."  He  half -persuaded  himself  that  it 
was  his  own  fault,  that  he  was  not  the  person  to  inter- 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  397 

fere,  that  he  ought  to  have  remembered  the  old  animosity 
there  had  always  been  between  himself  and  his  brother. 
But  then  there  was  the  bullying  of  Agnes.  There  had 
been  hints  of  that  before,  incidents  that  should  have  re- 
vealed to  him  before  the  true  relationship  of  the  couple. 
Agnes  had  been  bullied  into  marriage,  not  against  her 
will,  but  because  she  had  liked  it,  because  it  broke  in 
upon  the  somnolence  induced  by  her  own  charm. 

The  experiences  of  that  day  forced  Jamie  into  acknowl- 
edging that  he  had  been  living  in  a  fool's  paradise,  be- 
lieving in  humanity,  that  men  were  bound  together  by 
some  profound  spiritual  tie  which  in  certain  relation- 
ships, such  as  marriage,  friendship  or  common  suffering, 
was  made  clear  to  them :  further  that  men  were  masters 
of  their  actions  and  always  knew  tolerably  well  what 
they  were  doing.  Certainly  he  himself  hated  doing  any- 
thing that  he  did  not  understand  sufficiently  to  set  his 
conscience  at  rest.  Now  however  his  innocence  was 
shocked.  Men,  he  began  to  see,  were  terribly  at  the 
mercy  of  their  actions,  and  for  the  first  time  he  really 
doubted  himself.  Was  his  own  case  any  better  than 
Tom's  or  Peter  Leslie's?  Was  he  not  also  at  a  dead 
end,  making  it  tolerable  by  indulgence  in  the  most  easily 
procured  pleasures?  That  with  the  wonderful  free  joy 
'still  stirring  in  him  he  could  most  fiercely  deny.  Only 
he  felt  sorry,  utterly  and  miserably  sorry  that  such  things 
could  be.  Mrs.  Leslie  and  her  Peter,  Agnes  and  her 
Tom. — Where  in  either  was  evidence  of  the  spiritual  tie 
which  he  had  so  fondly  imagined  ?  Ugly,  ugly  and  mean 
it  was,  the  life  of  those  honoured  and  respectable  cou- 
ples. Money  or  no  money  had  nothing  to  do  with  it. 
Their  cruel  confinement  came  not  from  their  circum- 
stances but  from  the  conceptions  by  which  they  lived. 
They  were  neither  to  be  blamed  nor  hated.  The  evil 


398  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

that  they  represented  lay  rather  behind  than  in  them. 
It  was  an  evil  everywhere  present.  It  had  produced 
the  rows  and  rows  of  little  houses,  the  flat,  prosperous 
villas,  the  immense  factories,  the  foul  canals,  the  smok- 
ing stacks,  the  blighted  trees  and  the  pale  blighted  men 
and  women  of  the  streets.  It  was  subtle  and  compelling 
and  there  was  no  escape  from  it.  To  that  pass  had  men 
all  come  that  they  must  live  in  evil,  because  they  lived 
so  narrowly,  so  huddled  in  one  upon  another,  that  there 
was  no  moving  out  of  the  filth  of  their  own  decay  or 
the  stench  of  their  own  excrement.  Almost  Jamie  began 
to  hate  his  joy  which  had  led  him  to  feel  bitterly  this 
clinging,  muddy  evil.  He  did  not  know,  could  not 
know  its  source.  It  obscured  his  own  knowledge  of 
good,  for  the  good  he  had  always  acknowledged  had  be- 
come mechanical  and  automatic.  It  was  no  longer  a  liv- 
ing principle.  It  was  only  another  aspect  of  that  dreaded 
evil.  There  was  so  little  goodness  in  it.  It  was  hardly 
more  than  a  dressing  up  for  decency.  He  wandered 
through  the  streets  and  every  sight  that  met  his  eyes 
confirmed  his  impression.  He  choked  with  it  all,  was 
stifled  with  the  agony  of  his  own  ability  to  apprehend  the 
idea  intellectually.  It  was  as  though  the  truth  in  him 
was  burned  out  and  dwindled  to  ashes.  He  was  left 
with  nothing  but  ugly  facts.  It  was  no  comfort  to  him 
to  think  that  all  these  men  and  women  were  enduring 
heroically  the  abomination  that  was  in  them.  They  were 
not  heroic.  They  were  living  in  hiding.  They  were  pre- 
serving decency,  no  more.  All  their  effort,  all  their 
striving  achieved  no  more  than  that. — He  had  a  sense 
of  being  in  the  midst  of  some  appalling  mysterious  catas- 
trophe, devastating  the  whole  world  so  that  thought  no 
longer  had  any  machinery  wherewith  to  work,  since  all 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  399 

things  were  subtly  transformed  so  that  their  names  no 
longer  applied  to  them. 

He  came  at  last  to  the  street  in  which  he  lived,  so 
respectable,  so  prosperous,  already  so  suburban,  and 
when  he  came  to  his  own  house  he  said:  "This  is  my 
home."  He  needed  to  reassure  himself.  The  word 
"home"  was  a  mockery.  It  should  stand  for  the  dearest 
and  the  purest  known  to  man,  but  there  the  evil  was 
most  firmly  seated.  Every  house  in  the  street  was  a 
place  of  authority,  within  each  a  man  like  Peter  Leslie 
enthroned  in  an  easy-chair,  a  dead  man  at  a  dead  end. 

Yet  in  his  own  house  he  found  comfort.  In  his  mother 
he  met  purity  and  strength.  He  found  her  innocent  and 
his  impulse  was  to  go  down  on  his  knees  before  her,  for 
the  sight  of  her  could  release  him  from  the  almost  terror 
that  had  possessed  him.  She  was  marvellously  alive  to 
the  need  in  him  and  was  very  gentle  and  tender.  He 
surprised  her  into  intimate  talk  and  she  went  back  over 
the  years  and  told  him  more  about  his  father  than  she 
had  ever  done,  so  that  he  felt,  what  he  had  thought,  that 
love  for  her  was  in  the  grave.  Yet  that  love  was  indeed 
her  only  thought,  so  that  there  was  no  evil  in  her.  She 
was  no  longer  of  the  world  and  the  evil  had  passed  her 
by,  or  she  had  been  armed  against  it.  From  his  father 
and  those  deep  memories  her  talk  passed  naturally  to  her 
religion  and  Jamie  understood  how  perfectly  it  was  an 
expression  of  her  love,  the  stern  and  tender  love  she 
must  have  had  for  the  devout  and  gentle  man,  his  father. 
But  outside  in  the  world  from  which  he  had  fled  to  her 
such  a  love  could  no  longer  live.  It  had  lost  its  expres- 
sion. Evil  had  broken  the  vessel  that  could  contain  it, 
or  perhaps  the  vessel  had  been  broken  so  that  evil  could 
enter  in. 

He  could  not  tell  her  of  the  cataclysm  in  his  life.    She 


400  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

would  not  have  understood  it,  for  she  was  already  so 
remote.  Her  work  was  done  and  she  had  folded  her 
hands.  She  was  happy  still  and  clear  of  soul  in  her 
faith  and  her  love.  These  had  sustained  her  and  she 
would  never  understand  that  they  were  not  sustenance 
also  for  her  sons.  They  were  good  men,  as  men  go, 
and  she  was  content.  To  her  it  was  but  a  strange  in- 
cident that  Jamie  should  turn  to  her.  He  had  a  difficult 
character.  There  must  be  times  for  him  when  he  felt 
altogether  weak  and  helpless  and  unworthy.  His  father 
had  had  such  times,  when  he  had  felt  that  he  could  no 
longer  teach  the  Christian  belief  in  the  face  of  the  mean- 
ness and  jealousy  and  spiteful  rivalry  of  the  folk  in  the 
glen.  It  had  been  difficult  and  she  had  often  had  to  back 
his  gentleness  with  her  authority.  But  here  in  the  town 
the  people  were  so  much  pleasanter,  so  much  more  ready 
to  accommodate  each  other,  at  every  turn  there  was  such 
kindness  that  there  was  no  call  whatever  for  despair. 
Jamie  had  only  to  do  his  work;  the  care  of  souls  was 
no  affair  of  his.  He  had  only  to  do  his  duty  to  prosper 
and  indeed  he  had  his  share  of  prosperity.  Whence 
then  these  collapses?  .  .  .  All  the  same,  though  she 
could  not  in  the  least  understand  him,  she  was  glad  to  be 
able  to  comfort  him,  and  to  take  him  back  in  thought 
to  Scotland,  where  she  too  was  happier  and  livelier,  for 
a  while,  until  she  would  begin  to  remember  the  lives  of 
men  she  had  known  there,  fair  hopeful  men,  with  the 
same  strong  stirring  of  the  mind  that  had  too  often 
suddenly,  and  for  no  apparent  reason,  collapsed.  Then 
she  would  be  afraid,  and  quickly  would  conceal  her  fear, 
and  no  more  comfort  could  she  bring.  Life  here  in  the 
town  was  so  much  easier  and  gentler.  There  could  not 
be  the  same  dangers.  It  would  be  all  right.  "That" 
could  not  happen  here. — She  had  no  clear  idea  of  the 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  401 

nature  of  "that,"  but  her  memory  darted  for  one  little 
flash  to  the  death  of  her  husband  and  to  his  willingness 
to  die,  and  beyond  that  to  other  men  who  had  met  an- 
other kind  of  death  in  life.  It  was  only  for  a  flash. 
Those  things  were  very  far  away.  Here  were  ease  and 
security  and  prosperity  assured. 

Her  thoughts  had  carried  Jamie  with  her  and  he  sat 
grimly  opposite  to  her,  staring  into  her  face,  searching  her 
eyes  for  the  knowledge  that  condemned  him.  He  looked 
like  a  doomed  man.  He  gazed  at  her  as  though  in  her 
thoughts  were  some  heaven  from  which  he  was  for  ever 
shut  out.  Yet,  as  he  gazed  and  saw  that  heaven  he  felt 
that  the  evil  was  behind  him,  and  he  began  fiercely  to 
hope  for  another  and  a  higher  heaven.  Hers  was  too 
remote,  and  for  ever  inaccessible.  What  he  hoped  for 
was  a  sudden  revelation,  a  golden  city  springing  from 
the  earth,  towards  which,  even  though  he  might  never 
enter  it,  he  would  be  content  to  struggle.  Some  such 
vision  he  needed  to  resist  his  new  consciousness  of  evil, 
and,  because  he  needed  it,  already  in  the  depths  of  his  soul 
his  spirit  had  begun  to  create. — "The  life  of  a  man," 
said  Margaret  suddenly,  "must  be  a  hard  thing  for  it 
is  always  torn  two  ways." — "I  have  always  had  most 
pity  for  women,"  replied  Jamie. — "There  is  only  one 
way  for  a  woman,"  said  she,  "and  I  could  never  under- 
stand your  father  when,  as  he  always  used,  he  talked 
of  intellectual  beauty." — "Aye,"  said  Jamie,  "you  would 
always  understand  a  man's  thoughts  in  relation  to  the 
man,  but  never  value  them  for  themselves.  And  sup- 
pose his  passion  was  in  them,  what  then,  what  then  ?" — 
"Jamie,  Jamie,"  said  she,  "it  might  be  your  father  speak- 
ing, and  he  used  to  torture  himself  with  the  thought 
that  it  was  sin,  though  he  never  was  and  never  could  be 


402  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

a  sinful  man." — "Then,"  said  Jamie  humbly,  "that  is 
my  inheritance  from  him." 

So  he  went  away  and  sat  for  hours  in  front  of  his 
father's  portrait,  scanning  the  beautiful  rather  weak  face, 
the  wistful  dreaming  eyes,  the  delicate  mouth,  sensitive 
and  trembling,  that  never  could  have  borne  any  rude  tast- 
ing of  beauty  through  the  senses,  and  therefore  could 
have  known  no  sin,  no  defilement  of  beauty  for  sensa- 
tion. The  forehead  was  wide  and  clear.  Behind  it, 
Jamie  imagined,  thought  must  have  moved  with  an  ease 
and  largeness  unknown  and  never  to  be  known  to  himself. 
How  then  was  there  sin?  The  faith  that  was  in  his 
mother  was  limpid  in  this  man.  But  again  were  there 
not  thoughts  in  his  brain  which  his  faith  could  not  con- 
strain? Was  that  his  sin  ?  Jamie  decided  that  it  was  so, 
that  already  his  faith  was  insufficient,  that  he  also  had 
desired  a  new  Heaven  and  a  new  Earth,  for  when  the 
faith  is  insufficient,  then  evil  must  be  triumphant. 

Having  got  so  far,  Jamie  turned  from  the  picture  and 
went  to  the  window  to  look  out  into  the  scrubby  little 
back  garden  with  its  blackened  earth,  and  meagre  trees, 
at  the  grimy  walls  of  the  houses  opposite  and  the  smudged 
sky.  It  amused  him  to  think  that  in  that  prospect  he  was 
looking  for  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  seeking  in  the 
evil  itself  for  the  power  that  should  combat  it.  Tibby 
came  out  into  the  garden  with  a  basket  of  clothes  which 
she  proceeded  to  hang  out  on  the  line.  He  watched  her, 
fascinated  by  the  movements  of  her  strong  thin  body. 
She  had  on  a  blue  cotton  dress  and  the  colour  seemed  to 
lighten  all  the  scene,  to  draw  out  colour  and  force  from 
what  had  before  seemed  only  drab.  She  was  the  centre 
of  it  all,  one  solitary  human  figure,  dignified,  indestruct- 
ible. The  excitement  died  out  of  him.  He  felt  entirely, 
utterly  alone  with  Tibby.  That  she  was  unconscious  of 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  403 

his  presence  only  strengthened  the  idea,  and  he  had  no 
desire  to  have  more  than  the  idea  of  it.  With  her,  with 
the  idea  of  her,  he  felt  strong  and  most  wonderfully 
serene. 

Now  she  had  emptied  her  basket  and  returned  to  the 
house  again,  He  felt  then  that  he  understood  what 
Margaret  must  have  been  to  his  father,  who  became  at 
once  a  living  presence  to  him  so  that  the  myth  and  legend 
he  had  always  been  perished.  The  house  was  now  a 
living  home.  It  was  a  stronghold.  It  was  a  chamber 
in  the  golden  city  of  his  dreams,  but  only  the  more  re- 
pulsive was  the  life  outside  and  the  thought  of  going 
into  it  again.  He  would  have  the  night.  Perhaps  the 
night  spent  in  this  new  home  would  give  him  strength. 

A  messenger  brought  a  proof  of  his  article  on  the  play. 
He  corrected  it  without  heeding  a  sentence  or  remark- 
ing anything  but  verbal  inaccuracies,  while  the  messen- 
ger was  waiting,  a  cheese-faced  boy  who  sucked  his  teeth 
and  shifted  from  one  foot  to  the  other.  "Who  sent  you?" 
asked  Jamie. — "Mr.  Bigge,  sir." — "Wait  a  moment  and 
I'll  give  you  a  note." — "Yes,  sir." 

Jamie  wrote  to  Currie  Bigge  asking  him  if  he  wanted 
a  clerk  in  the  office,  and,  if  so,  would  he  communicate 
with  Mr.  Leslie  at  the  given  address. — "If  I  were  you," 
said  Jamie  to  the  cheese-faced  boy,  "I  should  run  away 
to  sea." — "I  'ave  thought  of  it,  sir,"  replied  the  cheese- 
faced  boy,  "but  I  believe  sailors  is  'orrible  rough." — 
"You'd  see  the  world."— "Plenty  to  see  in  Thrigsby," 
replied  the  boy,  rather  despising  Jamie  as  an  amateur, 
one  who  wrote  his  "stuff"  at  home  comfortably  and 
avoided  the  manly  rush  of  the  office  where  at  a  moment's 
notice  men  could  write  on  Foreign  policy  or  the  finances 
of  the  local  infirmary.  Nor  was  the  cheese-faced  boy's 
opinion  mended  by  the  present  of  sixpence  he  received. 


404  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

He  was  used  to  being  cuffed  or  kicked.  He  pocketed  the 
coin  and  broke  into  a  whistle  and  went  out  whistling. 

This  intrusion  restored  Jamie  to  his  normal  condition 
and  he  turned  to  his  books.  He  had  just  discovered 
Webster  and  was  soon  deep  in  the  White  Devil  which 
he  read  far  into  the  night,  finding  in  it  lines  and  phrases 
which  he  crooned  over  and  over  to  himself  until  he 
had  lost  the  excitement  they  roused  in  him  and  he  could 
appreciate  their  real  strength  and  keenness  which  seemed 
to  cut  through  the  appearances  of  life  to  reveal  life 
itself.  Never  before  had  he  so  closely  established  a  com- 
munication between  his  own  being  and  the  poetry  he 
worshipped.  From  that  heaven  he  was  not  shut  out, 
and  what  greater  heaven  could  there  be?  So  powerful 
was  this  happiness  that  it  endured  for  many  days  and 
carried  him  easily  through  the  routine  of  the  bank  and 
through  distasteful  hours  in  the  evening  at  the  theatre 
in  which  he  had  lost  faith.  Poetry  and  wit  were  done 
to  death  in  it,  and  it  was  a  place  of  blasphemy  where 
the  loveliest  movements  of  the  human  mind  and  heart 
were  debased  to  make  sport  for  snobs  and  sentimentalists. 

Much  Ado  About  Nothing  was  kept  in  the  bill  for  a 
month  and  was  replaced  by  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  which 
was  a  failure.  Mr.  Wilcox  had  not  the  physique  for 
Tony  Lumpkin  and  was  too  old,  and  he  was  so  pleased 
with  himself  in  the  part  that  there  was  no  holding  him 
in.  This  failure  produced  internal  dissension.  One 
night  when  Jamie  was  in  the  theatre  the  acting  manager 
came  to  him  and  held  out  a  copy  of  The  Post,  with  half- 
a-column  heavily  scored  in  pencil.  It  was  the  notice  of 
Much  Ado.  Jamie  read  it,  not  at  first  recognising  it  as 
his  own,  though  it  seemed  to  him  rather  well  written. 
—"Well,  Mr.  Lawrie!"— "Well,  Mr.  Tonks !"— " Several 
members  of  the  company  want  to  know  what  you  have 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  405 

to  say  about  it,  Mr.  Lawrie." — "It  is  a  newspaper  opin- 
ion."—"Is  it  yours?"— "Yes,  certainly." 

The  acting  manager  worked  himself  up  into  a  fury : — 
"There's  been  a  deal  of  talk  about  that  article,  Mr.  Law- 
rie, and  several  of  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  feel  that 
they  have  been  made  a  laughing-stock  of,  Mr.  Lawrie. 
They  have  held  meetings  about  it  and  the  sense  of  the 
meeting  held  to-day  was  that  nothing  but  a  public  apology 
on  the  stage  would  be  adequate." — "It  seems  to  me  a  very 
fair  opinion  on  a  matter  of  public  interest.  It  is  not  an 
expression  of  my  private  opinion.  If  I  had  expressed 
that  you  would  have  had  a  grievance." — "That's  all  very 
fine,"  said  the  acting  manager  plucking  up  courage,  when 
he  saw  that  his  onslaught  had  been  taken  amiably. 
"That's  all  very  fine,  but  I'm  not  here  to  split  hairs. 
The  play  was  your  own  show  and  you  ought  not  to 
have  crabbed  it.  The  success  or  failure  of  a  play  is 
a  very  serious  matter  to  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  en- 
gaged in  it.  There  are  several  of  them  who  declare 
that  they  will  leave  the  company  unless  they  receive 
an  apology." — "You  can  say  I  am  very  sorry." — "The 
apology  must  be  public." — "That  seems  to  me  unneces- 
sary. I  am  very  sorry.  I  had  not  thought  of  the  play 
in  terms  of  bread-and-butter  and  I  suppose  I  ought  to 
have  done." — "Very  well,  Mr.  Lawrie,  I  will  tell  them 
what  you  say  and  I  will  not  answer  for  the  conse- 
quences." He  strode  away  leaving  Jamie  more  than 
ever  disgusted  with  the  theatre  through  this  invasion 
of  personal  animosity  and  jealousy. 

In  a  moment  or  two  Mr.  Wilcox  came  rushing  up  in 
a  frantic  state. — "They'll  leave,"  he  cried,  "they'll  leave 
if  you  don't  apologise!  Why,  oh,  why  did  you  ever  go 
and  write  that  article?  Why  write  anything?  You 
weren't  there  as  a  critic,  and  she  had  such  good  notices 


406  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

everywhere  else.  She'd  have  had  the  success  of  her  life 
if  it  hadn't  been  for  you.  She'd  have  had  offers  from 
London,  and  she's  had  a  very  hard  time  of  it.  She 
can't  really  afford  to  go,  but  she  will,  if  you  don't  apolo- 
gise."— Jamie  was  beginning  to  feel  nettled.  He  really 
was  sorry  and  angry  with  himself  for  having  been  so 
ridiculously  disinterested  as  to  throw  the  whole  scheme 
into  jeopardy.  He  knew  his  Thrigsby  well  enough  to  ap- 
preciate what  a  good  joke  it  would  be  for  a  man  publicly 
to  disparage  his  own  goods.  Thrigsby  had  not  many 
canons  of  good  taste,  but  it  was  among  the  first  that  a 
man  shall  not  inquire  into  the  quality  of  his  own  but 
shall  assume  its  perfection. — "But  why,"  asked  Jamie, 
"was  there  no  fuss  before?  The  article  is  five  weeks 
old." — Mr.  Wilcox  was  nearly  in  tears. — '"I  lied  to 
them,"  he  said.  "I  told  them  that  Quintus  Flumen  was 
another  Mr.  Lawrie.  Then  they  found  out  that  there 
was  no  other  Mr.  Lawrie  on  The  Post.  I  said  that 
Quintus  Flumen  was  a  name  used  by  several  men;  but 
that  very  day  there  was  an  unsigned  article.  I've  told 
them  you  are  an  eccentric  and  they  didn't  mind  until 
this  play  was  a  failure.  Then  they  said  they'd  been  made 
a  laughing-stock  of  and  that  you'd  ruined  them.  And 
they  fancied  you  were  as  rich  as  Rothschild,  but  now 
they've  found  out  who  you  are." — "And  Rothschild,  I 
suppose,"  said  Jamie,  "would  not  be  asked  to  apologise." 
— "For  God's  sake,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox,  "don't  be  clever 
about  it.  Say  you'll  apologise  or  some  of  them  will  go 
out  of  the  theatre  and  we  shall  have  to  ring  down."- 
"I  would  be  glad,"  said  Jamie,  "if  the  whole  lot  left  the 
theatre  for  good  and  the  place  was  turned  into  a  Pepper's 
Ghost.  They're  only  fit  for  The  Murder  in  the  Red 
Barn." — "I'm  beginning  to  think,"  said  Mr.  Wilcox  dole- 
fully, "that  it's  a  pity  you  ever  came  behind  the  scenes 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  407 

at  all,  but  you're  a  wonderful  actor  wasted  and  I've  had 
such  hopes.  And  all  to  come  to  this !  I've  never  had  any 
luck  at  all.  I  was  born  on  the  stairs  and  it  is  my  destiny 
to  go  neither  up  nor  down.  But  all  goes  by  me  on  the 
stairs  of  life  and  my  mother  died  of  it." — Jamie  could 
hold  out  no  more.  He  clapped  Mr.  Wilcox  on  the  shoul- 
der and  told  him  that  he  would  see  him  through  and 
would  apologise  to  the  actors  if  they  would  meet  on 
the  stage  after  the  performance. 

"Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  he  said,  "I  am  very  sorry  to 
learn  that  you  have  for  some  weeks  past  been  labouring 
under  a  misunderstanding  and  I  only  wish  I  had  been 
informed  of  it  sooner."  Then  he  stopped.  It  was  one 
thing  to  promise  to  apologise  to  these  people,  another 
to  do  it.  He  hated  the  whole  pack  of  them  standing 
in  their  powdered  wigs,  painted  faces  and  old  costumes. 
The  words  stuck  in  his  throat.  He  had  done  them  no 
real  harm.  He  had  only  wounded  their  preposterous 
vanity,  from  which  it  had  been  his  impulse  to  defend 
their  art.  He  was  quite  clear  suddenly  as  to  his  motive 
in  what  he  had  done.  It  was  a  necessary  and  a  good 
thing  to  have  done,  and  because  he  had  wounded  their 
vanity  they  were  insisting  upon  his  humiliation,  and 
that  was  not  to  be  endured.  The  words  stuck  in  his 
throat.  He  began  again :  "Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  and 
again  he  stopped,  and  stared  round  at  them.  Would  none 
of  them  speak?  His  presence  there  was  apology  and 
humiliation  enough  for  them.  He  felt  a  hard  wall  of 
hostility  all  round  him.  Not  another  word  could  he 
find.  Why  waste  words  on  hostility?  The  whole  com- 
pany was  assembled.  From  a  far  corner  came  a  sob 
and  a  wail  and  Fanny  Shaw  rushed  away.  That  broke 
Jamie's  defiance  and  the  ring  of  hostility.  He  admitted 
that  he  had  done  a  very  foolish  thing  which  was  open  to 


408  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

misconstruction  and  he  declared  himself  heartily  sorry 
for  it.  His  apology  was  accepted  with  a  few  genial  ob- 
servations by  the  acting-manager  and  the  company  dis- 
solved, leaving  only  the  leading  players  on  the  stage. 
The  Beatrice  obviously  expected  a  few  words  in  her 
own  private  ear.  That  was  difficult,  for  Jamie  had  not 
altered  his  opinion  of  her  and  thought  her  a  bad  actress 
and  a  detestable  woman.  However  he  gulped  down  his 
distaste,  which  mounted  again  as  he  saw  her  bridle  at 
his  approach.  She  had  tasted  the  sweets  of  revenge  and 
had  laid  low  a  "manager"  and  on  the  whole  she  was 
grateful  to  him  for  it.  Very  archly  she  said,  in  her  best 
Beatrice  manner:  "Oh!  you  are  a  naughty  man!" — • 
"Now,"  replied  Jamie  with  a  most  courtly  bow,  "I  have 
your  opinion  of  me  and  we  can  cry  quits."  With  that 
he  walked  on  and  the  leading  lady  said :  "What  a 
tongue,  my  word,  what  a  tongue !" 

Only  then  did  Jamie  discover  that  there  is  a  real  pleas- 
ure in  being  disliked  when  respect  for  the  person  from 
whom  it  comes  is  impossible.  What  he  did  not  appre- 
ciate was  the  fact  that  he  had  redoubled  the  woman's 
pleasure  at  having  humbled  him. 

He  went  in  search  of  Fanny  and  found  her  crying  her 
heart  out  at  the  end  of  a  dark  passage.  She  flung  her- 
self into  his  arms  crying:  "She's  a  beast,  she's  a  beast, 
and  you  oughtn't  to  have  said  it." — "Pooh !"  said  Jamie. 
"Who's  the  worse  for  it?"  But  the  child  had  worked 
herself  into  a  passion  and  would  not  listen  to  him. — 
"She's  been  saying  awful  things  about  you  and  making 
everybody  else  say  them  too." — "But  I  don't  mind  what 
they  say,  Fanny." — "I  mind,"  she  moaned,  "and  I  would 
like  to  run  away." — "Dearest  child,"  said  Jamie,  "I 
shouldn't  have  said  anything  if  it  hadn't  been  for  you. 
I  couldn't  say  a  word  until  it  all  seemed  silly  and  not 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  409 

worth  bothering  about." — "It's  all  been  spoiled." — "No. 
no.  They'll  forget  about  it  very  soon." — "But  I  sha'n't. 
I  never  forget  anything." — "I  know  you  don't."  He 
found  it  very  difficult  to  find  the  right  thing  to  say.  She 
was  comforted,  but  she  still  clung  to  him,  and  it  needed 
a  strong  effort  of  sympathy  for  him  to  discover  how 
deeply  she  was  hurt.  But  with  that  effort  he  saw  that 
her  childish  innocence  was  broken  and  she  was  alive  to 
the  harshness  and  hard  egoism  of  men  and  women,  but 
as  yet  had  no  defences  against  them.  He  recognised 
his  own  responsibility.  He  had  saved  her  from  her 
normal  development  through  a  slow  lapse  into  her  sur- 
roundings until  she  was  one  with  them,  and  had  helped 
her  to  pass  from  the  wonder  of  childhood  to  a  world 
even  more  magical,  and  then  through  his  own  humiliation 
her  illusions  had  been  snapped. 

It  was  the  most  bitter  failure  he  had  ever  known,  but 
it  was  one  with  all  the  rest.  No  sooner  did  he  gain  some 
little  beauty  than  it  was  destroyed,  not  by  his  own  wick- 
edness but  by  his  absolute  inability  to  defend  it.  How 
had  this  thing  happened?  He  had  so  loved  the  child's 
happiness,  had  so  delighted  in  her  thoughts  that  he  had 
never  given  them  any  correction  in  his  own.  He  had 
been  able  to  live  in  her  mind  but  had  never  aided  her 
to  dwell  in  his.  She  had  seemed  to  him  so  perfect  as 
to  be  beyond  danger.  And  now  that  the  danger  had  come 
he  could  do  nothing  against  it  but  could  only  mutter  in- 
coherent words.  The  fury  in  the  child  shocked  him. 
He  had  forgotten  his  own  boyish  rages. — "Run  along 
now,  Fanny,"  he  said.  "Run  and  change  and  I'll  take 
you  home."  She  was  quiet  now  and  obeyed  him.  When 
she  returned  he  found  her  in  a  docile  mood,  almost  sullen. 
She  had  placed  herself  unreservedly  in  his  hands.  Then 
he  found  that  he  no  longer  thought  of  her  as  a  child. 


410  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

She  had  grown  most  astonishingly,  and  was  tall  and 
thin :  in  body  rather  like  Tibby  when  she  had  first  come 
to  the  family.  She  said:  "I've  got  to  go  on  because 
mother  wants  the  money,  and  if  I  didn't  go  on  I  should 
have  to  go  into  a  factory." — "How  would  you  like  to 
go  to  school?" — "Me?  They'd  laugh  at  me.  No.  I 
must  go  on." — '"But  I  don't  want  you  to  go  on  if  it  will 
make  you  unhappy." — "It  won't  if  I  can  see  you." — 
Now  he  had  been  careful  not  to  see  too  much  of  her,  for 
he  had  been  anxious  that  she  should  find  her  feet  for 
herself,  believing,  as  he  had  done,  in  her  immunity  from 
harm.  He  was  brought  back  to  the  personal  relation- 
ship and  its  responsibilities.  Those  he  had  not  even 
realised  and  his  effect  upon  the  child  had  been  to  isolate 
her  at  the  very  time  when  she  most  needed  support. 
That  he  knew  she  would  not  find  at  home,  but,  without 
him,  she  would  have  accepted  the  impossibility  of  all 
such  growth  as  cannot  be  accomplished  unaided. — "I'll 
promise  you,"  he  said,  "I'll  promise  you  that.  We'll 
have  nearly  every  Saturday." — "I  don't  want  anybody 
else,"  she  said.  "I  don't  care  about  anybody  else."  She 
seemed  very  weary.  Her  face  was  that  of  a  little  old 
woman.  Always  she  had  had  an  amazing  knowledge, 
a  singularly  exact  understanding  of  her  surroundings 
which  she  had  been  able  to  bear  easily  and  without  pain. 
Now  she  was  all  pain. — "To-morrow,"  he  said,  "you 
must  rest.  I  won't  hear  of  your  going  to  the  theatre. 
If  you  don't  rest,  I  won't  see  you  on  Saturday." — "I'm 
tired,"  said  Fanny,  "that's  what  it  is." — '"Yes,  poor 
thing.  Tired  out." — "I'll  be  all  right,  I  expect,  after 
a  rest.  Mother's  like  that.  She  gets  tired  out  and 
sometimes  the  smell  of  the  house  is  too  much  for  her." 
As  they  reached  the  door  of  her  house  she  put  up  her 
face  and  he  kissed  her.  She  was  reluctant  to  let  him  go 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  411 

and  kept  him  talking  for  some  moments  longer.  When 
she  knocked  he  stood  and  watched  her  until  the  door 
opened  and  she  passed  into  the  darkness  of  the  house. 
All  the  clear  beauty  had  faded  from  his  image  of  the 
child  and  he  was  bound  to  her  by  her  passionate  need  of 
him.  Without  him  she  would  be  swallowed  up  by  the 
dark  house  and  by  the  squalid  and  hideously  vibrant 
life  of  which  it  was  a  part.  He  was  fully  alive  to  the 
waking  woman  in  her,  dreaded  it  as  a  new  force  in  the 
conflict  of  good  and  evil  for  which  he  had  found  him- 
self suddenly  so  ill  equipped.  Yet  he  had  gained  in  him- 
self. He  was  aware  in  himself  of  vast  new  stores  of 
patience.  Not  yet  was  he  defeated.  Nothing  outside 
himself  had  completely  had  its  way  with  him,  but  also, 
his  honesty  admitted,  nothing  inside  himself  had  yet 
fought  its  way  to  a  conclusion. 

She  Stoops  to  Conquer  never  recovered.  Two  or  three 
other  plays  were  tried  but  with  hardly  more  success. 
Jamie  had  lost  nearly  two  thousand  pounds  when  there 
came  the  news  from  London  that  a  new  great  actor  had 
arisen,  who  was  none  other  than  Henry  Acomb.  He 
was  hailed  as  a  tragedian  worthy  to  rank  with  Kean  and 
Macready.  In  one  night  he  had  conquered  London  with 
his  performance  of  a  dual  personality,  a  nice  and  benevo- 
lent merchant  by  day,  a  dipsomaniac  and  a  murderer  by 
night.  Jamie  rushed  up  to  London  to  see  him.  The  suc- 
cess was  indubitable.  There  had  been  eight  weeks  of 
triumph  and  now  it  was  proposed  to  consolidate  this 
by  visits  to  the  principal  provincial  towns  beginning 
with  Edinburgh.  Jamie  offered  his  theatre  and  Henry 
Acomb  accepted  it,  agreeing  to  play  Macbeth  and  Hamlet. 
Jamie  saw  that  it  was  a  surrender.  He  was  convinced 
that  only  the  genius  of  the  individual  player  could  keep 


412  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  theatre  alive  in  England.  Acomb's  genius  certainly 
made  even  the  absurd  melodrama  in  which  he  was  play- 
ing seem  marvellous. — "Upon  me  soul,  Mr.  Lawrie," 
he  said,  "it  does  me  good  to  see  you.  An  honest,  north- 
ern face.  London  is  all  rogues  and  old  women,  and  an 
audience  of  Londoners  is  like  an  audience  of  sheep. 
They  cheered  me  on  the  opening  night,  and  it  sounded 
like  this :  Baa !  Baa-a-a !  Baa-a-a-a !" — Jamie  laughed 
and  recounted  his  experiences. — "Amateurs !"  said  Henry 
Acomb,  "amateurs!  You  can't  expect  a  city  of  workers 
to  put  up  with  the  kind  of  show  that  would  do  in  a  duke's 
drawing-room." — Acomb  was  entirely  charming.  His 
egoism  had  lost  its  aggressiveness.  He  had  won  that  for 
which  he  had  fought  during  fifteen  poverty-stricken  years 
and  no  longer  needed  to  convince  himself  of  his  own 
greatness.  It  was  generally  acknowledged,  and  he  was 
inclined  to  despise  it  a  little.  Selina  was  not  for  the 
moment  playing.  She  had  two  children  and  devoted  her- 
self to  them. — "I  tell  you  what,"  said  Acomb,  "I'm  going 
to  put  a  stop  to  the  treatment  of  actors  as  rogues  and 
vagabonds.  It  is  a  calling  like  any  other.  I  shall  have 
me  home,  me  wife  and  me  children  like  any  other  man 
and  I'll  be  treated  like  any  other  man,  if  I  have  to  go  to 
Parliament  for  it." 

So  Jamie  returned  to  Thrigsby  with  the  glad  news 
that  Henry  Acomb  would  come  fresh  from  his  London 
triumph.  Mr.  Wilcox  was  then  happy,  and  Mrs.  Leslie's 
heart  was  rejoiced  when  she  heard  that  Selina  was  com- 
ing, rich,  successful  and  respectable  once  more. 

Selina  had  gained  in  grace.  She  was  devoted  to  her 
Henry  and  their  struggles  had  made  her  practical  and 
sensible.  She  was  even  more  in  revolt  against  a  Bohe- 
mian life  than  he  and  had  firmly  set  her  face  against 
poverty.  When  she  heard  of  the  plight  to  which  her 


ACOMB  TO  THE  RESCUE  413 

father  and  mother  were  reduced  she  insisted  that  they 
must  leave  Thrigsby,  take  a  cottage  in  the  country  and 
keep  chickens.  She  went  down  to  see  Hubert  at  his 
farm,  being  neither  afraid  of  her  memories  nor  abashed 
by  them,  bought  a  cottage  and  within  a  week  had  her 
father  and  mother  installed  in  it,  Peter  enthroned  in  his 
easy-chair,  and  Mrs.  Leslie  hard  at  work  in  the  garden. 
Selina's  energy  and  happiness  were  contagious.  She  told 
Jamie  to  his  face  that  he  was  a  fool,  but  a  very  dear  one, 
and  that  he  had  better  stick  to  his  pen  and  leave  acting 
to  actors,  journalism  to  journalists,  and  living  to  people 
who  wanted  to  live. — "But  that,"  he  said,  "is  just  what 
they  don't  want  to  do." — "Pooh!"  she  replied.  "You 
don't  know  anything  about  it."  She  simply  melted  the 
unhappiness  in  him,  and  wafted  away  his  heavy  sense 
of  responsibility  with  a  touch.  She  wormed  out  of  him 
a  full  confession  of  his  deeds  and  misdeeds  and  it  was 
only  with  the  greatest  anxiety  that  he  could  bring  him- 
self to  tell  her  about  Fanny. — "It's  a  woman's  job.  Let 
me  have  the  child.  Or,  if  that's  impossible,  since  you 
insist  on  it,  you  must  look  about  for  a  wife  and  make 
her  do  it.  My  goodness,  gracious  me,  what  are  the 
women  of  the  town  thinking  of  to  let  a  dear,  handsome 
creature  like  you  go  about  loose  ?" — Jamie  laughed  aloud  : 
— "My  dear  Selina,"  he  said,  "don't  forget  you  ran 
away  from  me  yourself." — "You  were  so  overpowering," 
she  answered,  "and  if  there's  any  overpowering  to  be 
done,  I  prefer  to  do  it  myself."- — At  that  he  roared  with 
laughter  and  she  was  rather  puzzled. — "What's  the 
joke?"  she  asked. — "You.  You're  the  most  splendid 
joke  in  the  world."  That,  however,  was  not  Selina's 
view  of  herself  and  she  protested  in  good  round  terms. 
She  knew  what  life  was,  and  it  was  to  her  anything 
but  a  joke.  The  point  was  arguable,  but  she  was  im- 
patient of  argument. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 
JOHN'S  RETURN 


FOR  a  time  then  Selina  occupied  Jamie's  attention  to 
the  exclusion  of  everything  else.  The  theatre  made 
money  but  not  enough  to  repair  all  that  he  had  lost.  He 
did  not  mind  that,  if  it  had  been  necessary  to  bring  Selina 
back  into  his  world,  and  a  Selina  so  transformed  and 
become  a  living  fount  of  humour  and  zest.  She  teased 
him  for  being  an  old  stick-in-the-mud  and  declared  that 
in  many  ways  he  had  not  altered  a  bit  since  he  was  a 
boy  and  had  written  love  poems  to  her. — "And  you  still 
talk  Scotch,"  she  said.— "And  why  not?" — "You  don't 
want  everybody  to  know  where  you've  come  from."- 
"But  why  not?  I'm  proud  of  coming  from  Scotland." 
— '"It's  like  a  label  round  your  neck  and  people  ought  not 
to  wear  labels.  It  doesn't  matter  in  the  least  where  you 
come  from,  but  it  does  matter  that  you  are  Jamie  Law- 
rie." — "A  name  is  only  a  label." — "No  one  thinks  about 
it.  No  one  would  have  said  that  but  you.  There  are 
names  just  as  there  are  knives  and  forks.  O!  Jamie, 
if  I'd  married  you  I'd  have  had  you  out  of  this.  But  I 
thank  God  I  didn't  marry  you." — "So  do  I,"  said  he 
quaintly.  "I  was  born  to  trouble  like  my  friend  Mr.  Wil- 
cox." — "A  pair  of  innocents,"  said  she,  "and  you  ought 
to  be  parted  by  main  force.  I  shall  make  Henry  take 
old  Wilcox  back  to  London.  He's  not  good  enough  but 

414 


JOHN'S  RETURN  415 

he's  just  the  kind  of  darling  old  fool  who  makes  an  ideal 
stage  manager.  And  he  adores  Henry  almost  as  much 
as  he  adores  you,  and  with  better  reason.  Henry  may 
be  a  genius  but  he  has  a  head  screwed  on  his  shoulders 
and  would  never  lead  anybody  into  a  mess.  You  see, 
Henry  knows  what  he  wants." — "Is  all  this  for  my  bene- 
fit?" asked  Jamie.  "I  fancy  that  if  a  man  is  able  to 
know  what  he  wants,  it  is  because  he  does  not  want  any- 
thing much.  I  am  suspicious  of  that  kind  of  man.  He 
is  fat  and  eats  too  much."— "Who?  Henry?"— "No. 
That  kind  of  man,  and  by  eating  I  don't  mean  food.  I 
mean  every  kind  of  desire." — "Now  that's  exactly  why 
I  couldn't  marry  you,  because  you  always  mean  more 
than  you  say  and  say  one  thing  when  you  really  mean 
another.  It  has  grown  on  you  and  there  is  no  hope  for 
you." — "If  you  don't  stop  bullying  me  I  shall  write  about 
Henry  in  The  Post." — "Do  you  know,  I  met  a  man  in 
London  the  other  day  who  said  you  were  the  only  critic 
in  England." — "Really.  It  is  obviously  not  true." — 
"Yes.  He  had  written  a  book  about  money  and  you  had 
said  it  was  the  most  amusing  volume  that  had  appeared 
for  years." — »"I  remember  it.  Money  is  the  funniest 
thing  in  the  world." — "Not  when  you  haven't  got  any." 
— "So  you  like  having  money?'" — "Yes.  Love  it." — 
"Why?" — "It  makes  you  so  free,  so  free.  Everything 
that  is  happy  in  you  can  come  out  then." — "Then  people 
ought  to  be  paid  according  to  their  capacity  for  happi- 
ness."— '"O  dear,"  she  said,  "if  you're  going  to  worry 
about  what  ought  to  be  I  give  you  up.  You  really  must 
take  care  or  you'll  turn  into  a  G.G.  or  gloomy  grizzler." 
She  insisted  on  seeing  Margaret  and  then  for  the  first 
time  she  was  depressed.  Margaret  was  perfectly  charm- 
ing to  her  and  showed  herself  genuinely  pleased  at  her 
success.  She  had  read  her  newspapers  and  knew  that 


416  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Thrigsby  was  proud  of  Henry  Acomb.  But  Selina  sim- 
ply could  find  nothing  to  say.  Reminiscences  were  soon 
exhausted  and  then  conversation  ended.  The  two  women 
respected  each  other,  but  they  had  nothing  in  common. 
Neither's  charity  could  include  the  other.  Jamie  felt 
the  division  but  could  do  nothing  to  break  it  down,  noth- 
ing to  interpret  them  to  each  other  though  he  loved  and 
honoured  both. 

Selina  frankly  confessed  her  embarrassment  to  him.— 
"It's  no  good,"  she  said.  "It  simply  stifled  me.  All  the 
time  I  could  not  help  thinking  how  like  she  is  to  my 
father,  though  she  is  entirely  different  and  a  saint.  She 
is  a  saint  and  I  am  the  world  and  the  flesh,  and  I  am 
not  and  never  shall  be  a  family  woman.  If  ever  my 
children  begin  to  talk  about  'the  Acombs'  I  shall  turn 
them  out  at  once  to  learn  that  there  are  other  people  in 
the  world." — "That  is  all  very  well  for  you,"  said  Jamie. 
"You  have  the  world  at  your  feet,  but  other  people  are 
ambitious  and  have  no  means  of  gratifying  it,  because 
they  are  neither  charming,  nor  clever,  nor  witty."-  "You 
have  theories  for  everything,"  said  Selina,  a  little  tartly, 
because  she  had  really  suffered  and  now  resented  time 
wasted  on  suffering.  "I  can't  understand  people  want- 
ing to  be  anything  but  lovable." — "That  also  is  impos- 
sible for  most  people." — "Of  course  it  is,"  cried  she, 
"because  they  won't  love  and,  if  you  don't  take  care,  it 
will  be  quite  impossible  for  you.  You  will  grow  into 
a  saint  and  a  martyr  and  I  shall  hate  you." 

It  would  be  quite  useless,  he  saw,  to  explain  to  her 
that  his  mother  also  had  loved.  Selina's  love  was  easy 
and  maternal,  hardly  more  than  a  part  of  her  abounding 
physical  well-being.  She  was  very  wonderful  but  he  was 
devoutly  thankful  that  he  had  escaped  having  her  for 
a  mate.  For  her  part  she  shuddered  when  she  thought 


JOHN'S  RETURN  417 

that  she  might  have  had  to  live  with  him  in  such  a  house 
as  that,  regular,  ordered,  neat,  tidy,  overcrowded  and 
drab. — "I  don't  wonder  the  man's  running  to  seed,"  she 
said  to  Henry  as  she  described  the  tea  with  Margaret. 
"When  I  think  of  the  handsome  proud  boy  he  was  it 
makes  me  savage.  To  think  of  a  man  like  that  living 
with  his  mother.  She  might  be  an  angel  from  heaven 
but  she  could  never  satisfy  the  devil  in  him,  and  that's 
what  a  man  wants,  isn't  it,  darling?" — Henry  scratched 
his  head: — "Yes,"  he  said,  "upon  me  soul,  women  are 
savages  and  it  is  just  as  well." — "O,  Henry,"  she  said, 
"never  a  day  passes  but  I  thank  God  for  not  giving  you 
any  brains." — Henry  looked  dubious  over  that  and  again 
he  scratched  his  head. — "The  immortal  bard  had  brains." 
— "Yes,"  said  Selina,  breathlessly  and  indignantly,  "and 
we  know  what  he  was." — "What  was  he?" — '"Well,  he 
was  in  love  with  a  man." — "Oh!"  said  Henry.  "Is  that 
what  brains  does  for  you?" — "It  is,"  replied  Selina,  "and 
brains  with  Jamie  Lawrie  is  neither  more  nor  less  than 
a  disease." — "But  you  like  him?" — "Of  course  I  like 
him.  He  makes  you  want  to  take  him  in  your  arms  and 
comfort  him  and  stop  the  world  from  hurting  him.  I 
can't  think  why  no  one  does  it." — "You  had  your  chance," 
said  Henry,  in  whom  there  were  still  some  seeds  of  jeal- 
ousy. "And  after  all  the  world  hurts  me  even  if  I  haven't 
any  brains." — "Hum!"  said  Selina.  "You  are  much 
more  likely  to  hurt  the  world  than  to  let  it  hurt  you  and 
that's  why  I  love  you.  But  Jamie  lets  it  hurt  him 
through  other  people,  which  seems  to  me  to  be  asking 
for  trouble." — Henry  was  incapable  of  understanding 
that  and  the  conversation  languished.  Selina  seized  the 
opportunity  to  arrange  that  Mr.  Wilcox  should  be  taken 
back  to  London,  and  it  was  agreed  upon. 

Negotiations   were   subsequently   opened    for   taking 


418  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Fanny  also  but  her  mother  flatly  refused.  The  idea 
of  London  frightened  her.  It  was  a  wicked  place,  full 
of  marauding  men  and  governments,  press-gangs,  luxu- 
rious and  wicked  marquises  and  earls.  It  had  cost  her 
much  effort  to  be  convinced  of  Mr.  Lawrie's  virtue.  Mr. 
Lawrie  had  pledged  himself  to  secure  the  safety  and 
advancement  of  her  girl,  and  further  than  that  she  could 
not  go.  In  her  heart  of  hearts  she  absolutely  distrusted 
Selina  and  did  not  believe  a  word  she  said,  though  she 
was  quite  ready  to  accept  a  substantial  gift  of  money. — 
"She's  a  good  girl,"  said  Mrs.  Shaw,  "and  good  girls 
is  rare.  And  if  a  woman  has  such  a  blessing  in  the 
house  she  ought  to  stick  to  it.  Who  am  I  to  look  a 
gift  from  above  in  the  mouth,  with  rent  to  pay  and 
butcher's  meat  at  the  price  it  is?  Take  your  blessings, 
I  say.  The  poor  don't  'ave  too  many  and  there's  no 
call  for  them  to  go  gathering  mushrooms  in  the  streets. 
I  wouldn't  let  a  girl  of  mine  go  to  London,  not  if  it  was 
to  be  set  on  the  golden  throne  itself.  And  besides  that 
she's  a  growing  girl  yet  and  her  troubles  are  yet  to  come." 
Selina  was  a  shrewd  judge  of  womankind  and  knew  when 
to  hold  her  peace.  She  sighed,  for  she  saw  that  it  would 
go  hardly  with  Fanny,  having  such  a  mother  to  stand  in 
her  way  and  deny  her  right  to  anything  better  than  she 
herself  had  known. 

Selina  was  glad  to  leave  Thrigsby.  It  made  her  sad. 
She  missed  the  dignity  and  ease  of  London,  where  she 
could  be  entirely  happy  with  success  and  money  and 
friendliness  on  every  side  of  her.  She  was  glad  to 
leave  Jamie  too.  He  seemed  to  her,  though  this  she  did 
not  tell  him,  very  typical  of  Thrigsby,  labouring,  labour- 
ing, straining  in  the  darkness,  while  love  and  laughter 
and  all  sweet  things  passed  him  by. 

On  the  other  hand  she  left  him  feeling  that  he  had 


JOHN'S  RETURN  419 

had  a  bright  holiday,  all  the  more  delightful  for  the 
element  of  flirtation  there  had  been  in  all  his  conversa- 
tion with  her,  and  he  plunged  back  the  more  eagerly 
into  his  ordinary  life.  And  as  Selina  became  more 
remote  from  him  she  did  seem  just  a  joke,  delicious  for 
the  moment,  but  unessential.  She  stood  for  nothing  but 
evanescence.  He  could  no  more  symbolise  her  than  he 
could  a  sunbeam  in  a  shower  of  rain.  He  soon  found 
that  the  idea  of  her  was  not  necessary  to  him,  not  half 
so  necessary  as  the  idea  of  any  member  of  his  family 
or  the  idea  of  Tibby,  which  was  always  hovering,  un- 
heeded, behind  his  thoughts.  All  the  same  Selina  had 
left  him  conscious  of  his  unmated  condition,  and  he 
had  been  subtly  aware  of  her  scorn  of  him  as  a  man  in 
full  maturity  living  with  his  mother.  His  vanity  re- 
sented it  and  by  way  of  protest  he  set  about  making 
his  relation  with  his  mother  a  more  delightful  and  satis- 
fying one  and  strove  to  break  up  the  habits  which  en- 
couraged their  daily  indifference  to  each  other.  He 
talked  to  her  of  the  books  he  was  reading,  of  the  doings 
of  his  day  in  town,  of  her  doings  and  of  her  friends — 
(she  had  a  small  but  very  loyal  and  admiring  circle) 
— even  of  Tom's  virtues,  and  of  John's  future.  Eve- 
ning after  evening  he  sat  and  read  the  Bible  to  her  and 
tried  to  induce  her  to  appreciate  its  finest  passages  as 
literature;  but  she  would  not  have  the  Bible  criticised, 
nor  one  passage  set  above  another.  Still  less  would  she 
listen  to  him  when  he  tried  to  examine  its  philosophy  of 
life.  It  was  not  to  her  a  philosophy  but  an  authority. 
However,  her  taste  was  good  and  her  favourite  book  was 
Job,  which  she  much  preferred  to  the  histories. — "If 
you'd  only  let  me  read  Shakespeare  to  you,"  said  Jamie 
one  evening,  "you  would  find  Hamlet  very  like  the  Book 
of  Job,  though  much  better." — "There  can  be  no  com- 


420  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

parison,"  said  Margaret. — '"Indeed,  yes.  The  Bible  is 
the  book  of  the  Jews.  Shakespeare  is  the  book  of  the 
English.  They  are  very  much  alike  except  that  the 
English  have  discovered  humour  as  a  relief  from  their 
destiny." — "Don't  talk  nonsense,"  said  Margaret  with  a 
click  of  her  knitting-needles. — "Shakespeare  is  only  poet- 
ry. Read  me  the  twenty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah,  the 
miserable  overthrow  of  Tyre."  And  he  read: 

"  'The  burden  of  Tyre.  Howl,  ye  ships  of  Tarshish; 
for  it  is  laid  waste,  so  that  there  is  no  house,  no  enter- 
ing in:  from  the  land  of  Chittim  it  is  revealed  to  them. 

"  'Be  still,  ye  inhabitants  of  the  isle ;  thou  whom  the 
merchants  of  Zidon,  that  pass  over  the  sea,  have  re- 
plenished. 

"  'And  by  great  waters  the  seed  of  Sihor,  the  harvest 
of  the  river,  is  her  revenue;  and  she  is  a  mart  of  nations. 

'  'Be  thou  ashamed,  O  Zidon ;  for  the  sea  hath  spoken, 
even  the  strength  of  the  sea,  saying,  I  travail  not,  nor 
bring  forth  children,  neither  do  I  nourish  up  young  men, 
nor  bring  up  virgins. 

'  'As  at  the  report  concerning  Egypt,  so  shall  they  be 
sorely  pained  at  the  report  of  Tyre. 

'  'Pass  ye  over  to  Tarshish ;  howl,  ye  inhabitants  of 
the  isle. 

'  'Is  this  your  joyous  city,  whose  antiquity  is  cf  an- 
cient days?  her  own  feet  shall  carry  her  afar  off  to 
sojourn. 

'  'Who  hath  taken  this  counsel  against  Tyre,  the 
crowning  city,  whose  merchants  are  princes,  whose  traf- 
fickers are  the  honourable  of  the  earth  ?' ' 

Here  he  broke  off  to  say :  "I  can't  make  much  sense 
of  it,  but  that  last  verse  sounds  like  Thrigsby." — "Go 
on,"  said  Margaret.  He  finished  the  chapter,  and  then 


JOHN'S  RETURN  421 

repeated  the  last  two  verses: — "This,"  he  said,  "is  proph- 
ecy: 

"  'And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  after  the  end  of  seventy 
years,  that  the  Lord  will  visit  Tyre,  and  she  shall  turn 
to  her  hire,  and  shall  commit  fornication  with  all  the 
kingdoms  of  the  world  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 

"  'And  her  merchandise  and  her  hire  shall  be  holiness 
to  the  Lord:  it  shall  not  be  treasured  nor  laid  up;  for 
her  merchandise  shall  be  for  them  that  dwell  before  the 
Lord,  to  eat  sufficiently,  and  for  durable  clothing.' ' 

"Reading  Thrigsby  for  Tyre,"  he  said,  "I  am  only 
sorry  that  we  have  to  wait  seventy  years." — "Prophecy," 
said  Margaret,  "is  not  to  be  taken  literally.  It  is  to 
turn  our  thoughts  from  worldly  things.  Many  of  your 
father's  sermons  were  on  the  twenty-third  chapter  of 
Isaiah." — "Have  you  got  any  of  them?"  he  asked. — 
"About  fifteen.  He  used  generally  to  preach  extempore." 
— "I'd  like  to  see  them.  The  reference  to  food  and 
clothing  seems  to  me  worldly  enough,  but  perhaps  as  I 
am  only  a  bank  clerk  it  is  difficult  for  me  to  escape  all 
worldly  thoughts.  Tyre  and  Sidon  were  real  places,  you 
know,  mother,  and  I  think  they  must  have  been  very 
like  South  Lancashire,  without  the  smoke." — "They  may 
have  been  real  places,"  said  Margaret,  "but  they  are 
used  in  the  book  to  express  blemishes  upon  the  soul. 
The  book,  your  father  used  to  say,  is  the  story  of  the 
soul."-  -"But  it  is  not  a  true  story,"  said  he,  "for  there 
is  not  a  smile  in  it  from  beginning  to  end." — "Neither," 
replied  she,  "in  the  history  of  the  soul  upon  earth  is  there 
anything  so  pleasant  as  a  smile.  It  is  one  long  expiation 
for  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  as  we  are  told  in 
the  book  of  Genesis.  We  are  happy  for  a  little  while  as 
children,  but  that  is  soon  taken  from  us  and  we  have  to 
bear  our  lot." — "I  deny  absolutely,"  said  he,  "that  I 


422  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

was  happy  as  a  child,  and  I  was  never  happier  in  my 
life  than  I  am  now." — "But  then  you  were  not  an  ordi- 
nary child.  You  were  a  source  of  great  anxiety  to  me." 
— "And  I  daresay  that  is  why  I  never  believed  in  a  good 
without  evil.  I  always  did  prefer  poetry  to  prophecy  and 
always  shall." — Margaret  sighed:  "Well,  I  have  done 
my  best  for  you,  Jamie.  You  must  dree  your  own 
weird.  It  is  not  given  to  any  of  us  to  know  what  the 
Bible  means,  but  it  does  make  clear  to  us  our  own  wick- 
edness."— "I  suppose  so,"  said  he,  "but  it  makes  even 
clearer  the  wickedness  of  other  people.  I  shall  be  glad 
to  hear  what  my  father  had  to  say  on  the  subject  and 
I  should  like  to  read  him  to  the  assembled  family  when 
John  returns." — "That  will  be  soon  now,"  said  Mar- 
garet. "They  have  been  delayed  because  Sophia  is  going 
to  have  another  baby  and  they  do  not  wish  to  risk  its 
being  born  at  sea.  She  is  not  at  all  well  and  John  is 
very  anxious  about  her." — "I  sometimes  wonder,  if  the 
world  is  so  doomed  to  sinfulness,  why  we  ever  bring  more 
people  into  it." — "That  also  is  our  curse." — "O,  come, 
mother,  the  angel  appeared  to  Abraham  and  assured  him 
that  his  seed  should  be  as  the  sands  of  the  sea-shore  and 
he  was  quite  pleased  about  it,  and  you  have  fought  like 
a  tigress  for  your  own  five." — "There  are  consolations," 
said  Margaret,  "and  the  New  Testament  has  made  a 
great  difference." 

That  sent  Jamie  to  the  New  Testament  and  with  this 
and  his  father's  sermons  he  spent  some  weeks  until  the 
news  came  of  John's  return  to  England  and  landing  at 
Plymouth.  The  New  Testament  certainly  did  something 
to  relieve  the  stoic  pessimism  of  the  Old,  which  no  one 
but  the  Jews  could  have  endured,  but  it  produced  con- 
fusion. It  gave  relief  but  only  at  the  cost  of  sacrifice. 
There  was  still  the  same  belief  in  the  impossibility  of 


JOHN'S  RETURN  423 

happiness  after  childhood  and  the  same  rigorous  ex- 
clusion of  the  ordinary  mechanism  of  life  as  a  means 
to  happiness.  It  seemed  to  Jamie  that  the  Reverened  T. 
Lawrie,  his  father,  had  avoided  the  exclusion  by  escap- 
ing into  a  private  little  poetic  joy  of  his  own  which  he 
had  vainly  tried  to  express  in  the  conventional  termin- 
ology and  the  legend  of  the  religion  he  professed.  There 
were  passages  concerning  flowers  and  mountains  and 
running  water  which  were  purely  poetic  in  feeling  and 
entirely  free  of  the  taint  of  the  religion  which  forbade 
all  immediate  joy  and  under  pretence  of  redressing  mean- 
ness and  ugliness  and  brutality  sanctioned  them.  It  was 
quite  clear  to  Jamie  that  his  father's  faith  had  been  en- 
tirely different  from  its  letter  and  far  removed  from 
Margaret's,  who  looked  for  and  accepted  the  ugliness 
in  all  things  and  really  believed  that  her  sufferings  would 
be  rewarded  hereafter.  The  Rev.  T.  Lawrie  on  the 
other  hand  had  his  sufferings  immediately  rewarded  but 
never  succeeded  in  sharing  his  reward  with  another  liv- 
ing soul.  His  sermons  were  a  strange  combination  of 
conventional  damnations  and  blastings  and  natural  ec- 
stasy. As  he  read  them  Jamie  understood  himself  better 
and  other  people  rather  less,  inasmuch  as  he  began  to 
find  excuses  for  them.  It  was  simply  that  he  was  no 
longer  frightened  of  his  ideas,  and  could  abstract  them 
and  did  not  need  to  use  people  as  symbols  for  them. 
Many  of  his  obsessions  faded  and  he  was  more  open 
to  common  affection. 

He  was  very  eager  to  see  John  again.  Quite  unrea- 
sonably he  hoped  for  great  things  from  him,  who  had 
been  over  the  wide  world,  and  had  travelled  in  far  lands 
where  the  sun  shone  unimaginably  for  weeks  together 
and  peaches  were  so  common  that  they  were  given  to 
the  pigs  for  food.  John  was  to  be  in  some  sort  a  proof 


424  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

that  Thrigsby  was  wrong.  This  idea  had  come  from 
Tom,  who  had  been  greatly  upset  by  his  younger  broth- 
er's success,  not  as  success  but  as  an  assertion  that  there 
was  money  elsewhere  than  in  Thrigsby  and  that  there 
were  other  praiseworthy  means  of  becoming  rich  than 
by  being  a  Thrigsby  merchant.  This  it  was  impossible 
for  Tom  to  admit.  He  despised  two  things :  aristocracy 
and  speculation.  It  was  wrong  in  his  eyes  to  be  born 
rich  or  to  acquire  riches  suddenly,  for  wealth  was  to  him 
evidence  of  character.  A  poor  man  was  a  man  who  had 
something  radically  wrong  with  him,  but  a  duke  or  a 
speculator  could  be  rich  and  yet  possessed  of  nothing 
but  luck  or  cunning.  To  Jamie  such  ideas  were  repulsive 
and  he  looked  to  John  for  refutation  of  them.  He  imag- 
ined John  returning  like  a  nabob,  splendidly  generous 
and  putting  to  shame  the  screwing  and  scraping  and 
hoarding  that  went  on  in  Thrigsby  with  its  prematurely 
elderly  gentlemen  all  bent  on  proving  their  character  by 
their  banking  accounts.  What  made  the  situation  par- 
ticularly acute  was  that  Tom  had  docked  half  the  allow- 
ance he  had  made  to  his  mother  on  the  score  of  growing 
expense  and  with  the  excuse  that  the  household  was  really 
Jamie's,  who  as  a  single  man  could  well  afford  it. 

John  arrived  and  Jamie  met  him  at  the  station,  but 
did  not  recognise  him.  Sophia  had  altered  very  little. 
She  had  two  boys,  Angus  and  David,  and  a  Portuguese 
nurse,  picked  up  in  Madeira,  who  carried  a  baby  in  her 
arms.  A  tubby  little  man  was  standing  near  them.  He 
had  a  beard  and  wore  broadcloth  and  looked  like  a 
Thrigsbeian  tradesman  waiting  for  his  wife.  This  was 
John.  He  recognised  his  brother  and  came  forward. 
Jamie  stared  at  him  and  could  not  conceal  his  disappoint- 
ment. This  was  another  and  a  lesser  Tom.  Where  was 
the  adventurer,  the  nabob,  the  rare  traveller  ?  And  when 


JOHN'S  RETURN  425 

John  spoke  it  was  with  a  Scotch  accent  more  pronounced 
than  would  be  heard  upon  the  lips  of  any  Scot  in  his 
native  land. — "Ye've  no'  cheenged,  Jamie,"  he  said.— 
"You've  grown  fat !"  said  Jamie,  almost  in  a  tone  of  hor- 
ror.— "I  should  have  known  you  anywhere,"  said  Sophia. 
"This  is  Angus  and  this  is  David,  and  this  is  Maria.  She 
doesn't  speak  a  word  of  English  and  I  don't  know  a 
word  of  Portuguese  but  she  simply  would  not  be  parted 
from  baby.  She  was  just  like  a  piece  of  luggage.  She 
belonged  to  us  and  had  to  be  packed." — "But  I  had  to 
pay  her  passage  just  as  much  as  if  she'd  been  English," 
said  John.  Luggage,  Maria  and  the  children  were  sent 
off  in  one  fly  and  Jamie  and  his  relatives  followed  in  an- 
other. John  seemed  actually  to  be  pleased  to  be  back 
in  Thrigsby  and  remarked  changes  and  remembered 
shops  and  landmarks. — "A  bit  different  to  our  first  com- 
ing to  Thrigsby,"  he  said.  "There  was  nothing  in  the 
old  place  but  you  then;  at  least,  for  me." — '"Then  you 
can  imagine  what  it  was  like  for  me,"  said  Jamie,  "com- 
ing here  with  nothing  at  all  in  front  of  me.  I'm  still 
looking  for  it." — He  liked  John  for  saying  that.  It 
was  a  taste  of  the  old  John  and  a  little  palliated  the 
shock  that  he  had  had  in  seeing  his  brother  come  back 
as  though  it  were  only  from  the  sea-side.  However 
that  relief  was  taken  from  him  for  John  said :  "You 
little  thought  then  that  I  should  be  the  rolling  stone 
of  the  family.  But  sometimes  it's  the  rolling  stone  that 
gathers  the  moss,  eh,  Sophia?"  And  Sophia  said:  "I 
don't  suppose  your  mother  will  look  for  any.  She  won't 
care  so  long  as  you  roll  back  to  her." 

Indeed  when  they  reached  home  they  found  Margaret 
strangely  excited  but  having  herself  under  tight  control. 
She  was  arrayed  in  her  best  and  had  tea  ready.  She 
received  John's  kisses  almost  absently.  Her  eyes  were 


426  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

for  her  grandchildren,  the  two  sturdy  little  Lawries  and 
the  plump  brown  baby.  The  boys  had  been  instructed 
to  bob  to  their  grandmamma  as  lords  bob  to  the  Queen. 
Margaret  was  delighted  with  them  and  Jamie  felt  an- 
noyed with  John  for  not  taking  a  more  obvious  pride 
in  his  sons.  After  all,  they  were  his  real  treasure  and 
Margaret's  instinct,  as  usual,  was  perfectly  right. 
Sophia  was  blissfully  happy,  but  John  looked  rather 
morose  as  though  this  was  not  quite  what  he  had  ex- 
pected. He  stood  gazing  round  the  room,  taking  in  its 
contents,  and  his  eyes  were  rather  contemptuous.  Maria 
stood  dandling  the  baby  with  a  wide  grin  on  her  ma- 
hogany-coloured face,  and  her  strong  white  teeth  flash- 
ing. Margaret  spoke  to  her  and  she  broke  into  a  torrent 
of  Portuguese. — "O!"  said  Margaret,  "I  hope  she  is 
not  a  papist." — "There  are  no  Protestants  in  Madeira," 
said  Sophia  apologetically. 

The  children  were  removed,  Tibby  taking  charge  of 
them  and  Maria. — "Of  course,"  said  Margaret,  "you  will 
send  her  back  as  soon  as  you  are  settled  here." — "I  don't 
think  you'll  get  her  to  go  until  the  baby  can  walk,"  said 
Jamie. — Sophia  cried :  "Why,  Jamie,  what  do  you  know 
about  it?" — -"Not  much,"  he  said,  "but  I  fancy  I  know 
something  about  Maria." — "More  than  I  do,"  John  threw 
in.  "I  only  know  that  she  is  an  infernal  nuisance  and 
eats  as  much  as  an  elephant." — "Do  they  have  elephants 
in  Australia?"  asked  Margaret,  by  way  of  making  con- 
versation easier. — "Of  course  they  don't,"  answered 
John.  "That's  India.  In  Australia  they  have  emus,  kan- 
garoos, wallabies  and  black  swans  and  no  other  wild 
animals.  It  is  a  beastly  place  and  I  don't  wish  to  talk 
about  it." — "But  we  expected  you  to  talk,  John.  We 
stay-at-homes  have  nothing  to  tell,  except  what  I  have 
already  told  you  in  my  letters.  You  heard  about  Tom 


JOHN'S  RETURN  427 

and  Agnes  and  really  nothing  much  else  has  happened. 
We  want  to  hear  what  you  intend  to  do." — "That  de- 
pends on  Sophia,"  said  John.  "She's  a  regular  Greig 
and  can't  bear  to  be  parted  from  her  family  and  wants 
me  to  build  near  them.  We  have  promised  to  go  up 
there  next  week  to  stay  and  see  what  can  be  done  about 
it." — "Next  week?"  asked  Margaret  a  little  querulously. 
"I  hoped  you  would  make  a  longer  stay  than  that." — < 
John's  eyes  roved  disapprovingly  round  the  room.  It 
was  obvious  that  he  had  no  intention  of  staying. — "I 
want  to  settle  down,"  he  said.  "The  sooner  the  better. 
I've  been  thinking  out  in  Australia  and  it  is  obvious  to 
me  that  England  has  to  look  for  her  future  to  the  mid- 
dle classes,  at  least  to  those  members  of  it  who  are  rich 
enough  to  have  leisure  without  the  false  position  which 
ruins  the  aristocracy.  If  I  am  well  enough  I  should 
like  to  stand  for  parliament.  If  I  am  not  I  shall  devote 
myself  to  the  study  of  politics.  I  am  convinced  that 
unless  the  middle  classes  take  the  trouble  to  understand 
politics  there  will  be  a  revolution.  Palmerston's  policy 
has  been  the  ruination  of  the  country  and  we  are  taking 
on  more  than  we  can  safely  deal  with.  What  England 
wants  is  safety  and  the  only  safe  people  in  it  are  the 
middle  classes.  It  is  high  time  we  had  a  Prime  Minister 
without  a  title." — Margaret  and  Jamie  exchanged  be- 
wildered glances.  Had  the  family  produced  a  bore? 
That  was  the  uneasy  suspicion  that  flashed  across  Jamie's 
mind.  If  sun  and  peaches  produced  that  effect,  better 
the  smoke  and  gloom  of  Thrigsby. — John  went  on: 
"Bright  was  always  my  man,  you  know.  Cobden  and 
Bright  set  the  country  on  the  right  road  and  it  is  simply 
disastrous  that  the  aristocracy  are  still  allowed  to  have 
any  say  in  the  government." — "What  I  want  to  know 
is,"  said  Jamie,  "do  kangaroos  really  carry  their  young 


428  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

in  a  pouch  and  is  it  true  that  they  can  be  taught  to  box?" 
— Sophia  gave  a  wild  giggle. — "Not  that  I  ever  heard 
of,"  said  John  solemnly,  "but  they  kick  like  a  French- 
man. And  that's  another  thing  that  I  cannot  abide, 
this  toadying  to  Louis  Napoleon.  I  should  have  thought 
Europe  had  had  enough  of  that  family/' — "Who  is 
Louis  Napoleon?"  asked  Jamie,  and  John  gasped, 
stared,  appreciated  the  snub  and  was  angrily  silent. — 
"Sophia  dear,"  said  Margaret,  "do  tell  me  if  you  are 
glad  to  be  back  in  England." — "Glad  is  not  the  word  for 
it.  You  can't  imagine  what  it  means  to  come  back  and 
see  green  fields  and  hedges  and  a  soft  blue  sky  full  of 
wonderful  great  clouds.  You  need  to  have  been  in  a 
place  where  the  sky  is  hot  and  hard  and  for  months 
on  end  there  is  never  any  rain.  Everything  else  seems 
hard  and  uncomfortable.  It  can't  be  home  where  there 
is  no  softness  and  gentleness." — John  interrupted  this 
charming  lyrical  praise  of  England. — "What  strikes  me 
about  England,"  he  said,  "is  that  she  is  asleep." — "You 
won't  think  that  if  you  try  to  do  business  with  an  Eng- 
lishman," said  Jamie. — "I  have  no  intention  of  doing 
business,"  retorted  John,  "and  my  experience  of  peo- 
ple is  that  they  are  quite  capable  of  doing  business  in 
their  sleep;  that  is,  without  being  awake  to  the  serious 
problems  of  life."  At  this  point  Margaret  seemed  to 
realise  that  this  was  not  the  John  of  her  dreams  and 
expectations.  She  had  looked  for  a  long-lost  son  to 
come  back  grateful,  burdened  with  experiences  and  riches 
to  the  bosom  of  the  family  which  had  sent  him  forth.  It 
was  slowly  being  borne  in  upon  her  that  John  had  not 
a  thought  in  his  head  for  the  family.  She  might  have 
known  that.  Had  it  been  otherwise,  he  could  not  have 
given  his  children  a  popish  nurse.  With  less  dismay 
and  more  excitement  Jamie  had  become  aware  of  the 


JOHN'S  RETURN  429 

same  thing.  John  was  not  a  bore,  he  was  a  phenome- 
non. After  all,  why  should  he  expect  John  to  regard 
the  family  with  more  respect  than  himself,  to  whom 
it  no  longer  existed  as  at  once  the  condition  and  the 
object  of  life?  He  could  not  altogether  ignore  it  as  John 
seemed  to  do. — '"What  are  the  serious  problems  of  life?" 
he  asked. — "The  development  of  a  democratic  govern- 
ment without  the  tyranny  of  the  mob.  That  is  the  first 
and  it  contains  all  the  rest." — "I  don't  think,"  replied 
Jamie,  "that  you  will  find  a  single  woman  in  the  world 
to  agree  with  you." — "Women,"  said  John,  "are  not 
concerned  with  the  serious  problems  of  life." — "Moth- 
er's fingers  are  simply  itching  to  smack  you,"  said  Jamie 
and  at  that  even  John  laughed  and  Margaret  joined 
in,  and  at  last  the  party  felt  at  their  ease.  Sophia  chat- 
tered away,  told  stories  of  the  children,  described  their 
life  in  Australia  in  a  house  built  of  wood,  their  dismay 
when  they  had  the  news  of  Murdoch's  failure,  and  how 
quietly  John  took  it  all,  the  excitement  of  the  gold  rush, 
the  long  voyage  home  and  their  stay  in  the  paradise 
of  Madeira.  Jamie  warmed  to  her.  She  seemed  to 
him  the  most  delightful  woman  he  had  ever  met,  so 
human  and  good,  and  because  good,  beautiful.  She 
was  not  at  all  exciting,  but  was  immensely  satisfying: 
a  little  bovine,  but  she  had  what  he  had  hardly 
met  in  a  woman  before,  absolute  physical  contentment. 
Warmth  came  from  her  and  it  was  clear  that  to  her 
marriage  was  a  blessed  state.  That  was  to  John's  credit, 
and  from  that  Jamie  began  to  appreciate  his  brother's 
honesty  and  entire  lack  of  pretension.  John  had 
not  changed  so  much  as  he  had  thought.  Always  blunt 
and  straightforward  he  had  simply  ignored  everything 
in  his  way  that  threatened  to  prevent  his  being  so. 

Later  on  when  the  brothers  talked   together  Jamie 


430  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

found  that  John  had  without  a  tremor  discarded  the  idea 
of  the  family,  religion,  every  pretence  of  superiority 
either  as  man  or  Englishman  as  hindrances  to  the  prac- 
tical genial  happiness  of  his  desire.  He  had  become 
an  out-and-out  Darwinian  and  to  him  man  was  but 
an  animal  who  could  outwit  all  other  animals  and  main- 
tain himself  in  ease  and  security  all  his  days,  loving  his 
wife,  his  children  and  his  occupation  until,  full  of  years 
and  blessings,  he  died  and  was  forgotten.  No  immor- 
tality for  John :  mortality  was  quite  enough  for  him 
and  he  only  required  that  it  should  be  decent  and  or- 
derly. At  first  Jamie  envied  him  and  thought  he  had 
found  the  way  of  peace,  but  before  long  he  was  in 
revolt.  John's  way  was  intolerably  dull  and  his  ideal 
of  comfort  seemed  ludicrous.  One  little  particle  of 
envy  remained  with  him  and  the  night  before  John's 
departure  for  the  Greigs'  Jamie  confided  that  if  he 
could  find  another  woman  like  Sophia  he  would  marry 
her. — "Oh!"  said  John,  "but  Sophias  do  not  grow  on 
every  bush." 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

A    LETTER    FROM    ROME 


A  LARGE    package    arrived    from    Italy.      It    con- 
tained sketches  of  the  Austrian  Tyrol  and  the  Alps 
painted  by  Mary  on  the  top  of  the  diligence  as  she  went 
by  easy  stages  from  Berlin  to  Florence.     She  wrote : 

"One  thing  only  in  your  letters  worries  me,  dearest 
Jamie.  They  grow  more  and  more  theoretical,  without 
being  abstract.  You  probably  won't  know  what  I  mean. 
I  have  already  torn  up  seven  letters  to  you.  All  the 
time  as  I  travelled  I  was  obsessed  by  a  feeling  that  you 
were  unhappy,  but  as  your  letters  never  contain  any 
hint  of  it  I  must  conclude  that  it  was  hallucination  on 
my  part.  Yet  it  was  very  real.  I  sometimes  have  a 
kind  of  fury  that  you  are  not  with  me.  Seeing  that 
you  are  not  married  there  seems  no  reason  why  you 
should  not  be.  There  have  been  cases  like  that  of  a 
brother  and  a  sister  finding  more  through  each  other 
than  they  ever  could  have  done  through  anybody  else. 
They  are  to  each  other  like  the  arch  in  some  of  the  pic- 
tures here;  through  which  one  is  shown  a  most  lovely 
landscape.  I  confess  that  what  I  see  through  you  I 
do  not  altogether  like.  I  have  been  so  long  away  from 
home  and  perhaps  I  have  lost  touch  with  you  and  can 
only  see  what  you  are  willing  to  let  me  see.  If  I  were 


432  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

in  touch  with  you,  I  should  see  more  than  you  would 
be  aware  of.  I  am  not  at  all  to  be  envied.  You  try 
living  among  foreigners,  away  from  those  you  love, 
and  living  on  letters.  It  is  not  far  short  of  starvation. 
I  have  had  my  days  of  real  physical  starvation,  for  I 
have  sometimes  been  miserably  poor,  but  that  is  noth- 
ing to  it.  Please  realise  that  and  write  to  me  more 
often,  more  humanly  and  less  theoretically.  What  do 
I  care  whether  the  family  is  dying  in  England  and  re- 
ligion is  going  the  way  of  all  flesh  and  the  English  are 
most  dangerously  exposed  to  evil?  Mammon,  Moloch, 
Beelzebub,  Ahriman  and  the  rest  of  them  may  take 
the  lot  of  them  and  I  sha'n't  care.  I  can't  love  a  na- 
tion :  and  I  can  and  do  love  you  and  very  much  care 
whether  you  are  or  are  not  well,  happy,  contented  in 
mind  and  body,  but  most  of  all  in  mind,  for  you  have  a 
mind  and  are  the  only  member  of  the  family  who  has, 
but  it  is  always  worrying  about  other  people's  affairs. 
That  is,  I  know,  because  you  are  so  sympathetic  and 
simply  cannot  help  living  in  other  people's  lives,  but 
to  do  that  you  must  not  mind  their  being  horrid.  If 
they  are  horrid  it  is  because  they  like  it,  and  neither 
can  nor  want  to  be  any  better.  Tom  likes  money.  He 
gets  money.  John  likes  comfort  and  he  gets  comfort. 
Mother  likes  God  and  she  gets  God,  and  none  of  them 
can  understand  anybody  liking  anything  else  but  their 
own  particular  little  thing.  I  don't  quite  know  what 
you  like  but  I  am  quite  sure  that  you  don't  like  it  for 
its  own  sake,  but  because  it  leads  you  on  to  liberty  or 
heaven  or  whatever  you  like  to  call  it.  If  you  could 
be  here  you  would  understand  yourself.  I'm  sending 
you  some  of  my  badly  drawn  sketches  so  that  you  can 
see  for  yourself.  May  they  bring  some  light  into  your 
dark,  dirty  Thrigsby!  Italy  means  light!  Goethe  said 


A  LETTER  FROM  ROME  433 

that  or  something  like  it.  Italy  means  Garibaldi  and 
Mazzini,  and  the  Risorgimento,  which  will  mean  in  the 
end  politicians,  but  to  have  had  two  men  like  that  is  a 
great  deal,  and  I  dislike  England  for  being  sentimental 
about  them.  You  can't  think  how  funny  England  seems 
at  this  distance,  patronising  a  man  like  Garibaldi,  as- 
suring him  that  she  is  free  and  that  she  will  be  only 
too  glad  if  he  can  make  Italy  like  her.  And  when  the 
English  say  that  they  are  free  then  I  think  of  you  and 
Thrigsby;  great  machines  and  tall  chimneys  belching 
smoke ;  and  I  compare  that  with  the  freedom  that  is  al- 
ready in  the  heart  and  mind  of  a  man  like  Garibaldi.  I 
have  been  reading  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  and  I  know  that 
a  country  which  has  roused  such  burning  indignation 
cannot  be  free.  But  clearly  the  English  believe  them- 
selves to  be  free  and  the  odd  thing  is  that  they  persuade 
other  countries  that  they  are  so.  The  men  I  meet  here 
believe  it,  and  it  was  just  the  same  in  Germany.  I 
suppose  they  mean  that  we  don't  have  soldiers  clanking 
and  clattering  about  everywhere.  I  suppose  it  was  an- 
noying to  have  the  Austrians  in  Milan,  but  I'm  becom- 
ing a  cosmopolitan  and  don't  think  one  kind  of  person 
is  better  than  another.  So  long  as  I  have  a  crust  of 
bread  and  one  spare  gown  and  a  roof  over  my  head  I 
don't  care  where  I  am.  If  only  everybody  would  agree 
about  that  there  wouldn't  be  any  soldiers,  for  there 
would  be  plenty  of  room  for  all  of  us  and  there  would 
be  nothing  to  fight  about.  They  say  here  that  there  is 
going  to  be  war  in  America.  I  can't  imagine  why. 
Surely  there  is  room  for  everybody  there.  But  I  sup- 
pose the  Americans,  no  more  than  the  Europeans,  don't 
think  as  I  do.  I  am  like  Goethe,  a  good  European, 
and  I  believe  nothing  matters  but  civilisation,  and  I 
believe  in  that  because  it  makes  possible  the  kind  of 


434  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

life  I  -like.  I  expect  the  truth  of  the  matter  is  that 
most  people  dislike  civilisation  because  it  means  re- 
straint, and  so  this  general  dislike  expresses  itself  in  a 
number  of  particular  little  dislikes,  which  gather  into 
something  that  is  far  more  dangerous  than  hatred, 
namely  a  superstitious  jealousy.  I  think  I  agree  with 
you  about  the  God-myth  having  become  hopelessly  in- 
adequate under  modern  conditions  and  that  the  family 
goes  with  it.  It  is  all  very  difficult.  Life  does  suddenly 
seem  to  have  become  more  difficult,  but  surely  all  the 
better  for  that.  I  suppose  there  will  always  be  myths 
but  the  thing  to  avoid  is  the  giving  of  authority  to  a 
myth.  One  wants  belief,  for  life  must  have  a  struc- 
ture, but  if  evolution  is  true,  as  I  think  it  is,  then  each 
individual  may  be  trusted  to  make  his  own  structure 
to  convey  and  carry  whatever  it  may  be  that  he  desires. 
Selfishness  makes  structure  impossible.  That  is  why 
ready-made  structures  are  in  the  end  always  broken 
down.  With  every  man  free  to  make  his  own  structure, 
selfishness  would  be  gradually  squeezed  out.  Evolution 
has  given  a  new  meaning  to  liberty  as  to  everything  else 
and  I  suppose  none  of  us  yet  realises  one-tenth  of  all 
that  it  does  mean.  I  think  Darwin  is  far  more  the 
saviour  of  England  than  ever  Nelson  was,  for  he  has 
saved  her  from  herself,  which  was  much  more  difficult 
than  saving  her  from  Napoleon.  I  find,  and  I  daresay 
you  do  too,  that  evolution  has  given  a  new  meaning  to 
poetry,  and,  oddly  enough,  also  to  the  Bible,  which  I 
have  been  reading  again.  It  is  quite  wonderful  but  it 
makes  me  feel  ashamed  of  myself  for  I  realise  that  I 
have  read  the  poets  for  their  words  and  not  for  their 
poetry.  That  is  my  chief  comfort  here.  I  have  not 
yet  found  any  work  to  do,  and  am  again  poor,  but  living 
with  a  lovely  view  over  roofs  to  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's. 


A  LETTER  FROM  ROME  435 

I  have  been  ill :  Roman  fever.  Therefore  I  cannot  write 
a  long  letter  and  the  sketches  must  tell  you  all  the  won- 
ders of  my  journey  here.  I  shall  stay  until  I  can  speak 
Italian  and  have  read  Dante  and  then  with  two  languages 
and  my  school  French  I  shall  seek  employment  in  Eng- 
land. My  heart  is  in  Edinburgh,  but  I  could  not  bear 
to  live  there  again.  Please  keep  the  sketches  and  when 
you  write  send  me  some  sort  of  picture  or  photograph  of 
yourself.  Get  Agnes  to  draw  you.  She  has  a  real  tal- 
ent. I  feel  very  sorry  for  her  and  Tom.  It  must  be 
most  disappointing  to  them  to  have  no  children,  and 
especially  hard  with  John's  boys  so  fine  and  jolly.  I 
hope  John's  comfort  will  not  stifle  them  but  he  is  sen- 
sible and  will  bring  them  up  well.  If  you  could  see 
the  children  here!  You  would  be  envious  of  Italian 
women.  At  least  I  am.  The  Spirito  Santo  must  have 
had  something  to  do  with  them.  They  say  it  is  the 
Spirito  Santo  when  a  priest  is  the  father!" 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

MRS.    ELIAS    BROADBENT 


FOR  once  in  a  way  Jamie's  expectations  were  ful- 
filled and  there  was  a  great  change  brought  about 
by  John's  return,  though  it  came  rather  from  Sophia. 
Indeed  with  John  there  was  soon  a  breach.  Jamie  was 
anxious  that  provision  should  be  made  for  his  mother's 
old  age  and  wished  to  draw  up  some  scheme  by  which 
the  three  of  them  should  begin  at  once  to  contribute. 
Tom  had  refused  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it  and 
John,  when  he  was  sounded,  shared  Tom's  view  that  as 
long  as  Jamie  lived  with  their  mother  it  was  his  affair 
and  there  was  no  need  for  further  thought.  Margaret 
kept  his  house  for  him  and  was  therefore  entitled  to  a 
home  at  his  expense.  Tom  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to 
hint  that  his  elder  brother  was  trying  to  shirk  his  re- 
sponsibilities and  he  gave  John  a  most  lurid  account  of 
Jamie's  loose  and  extravagant  private  life.  In  that  ac- 
count Jamie  figured  as  a  minor  Heliogabalus.  Sophia, 
however,  knew  better,  and  always  defended  her  brother- 
in-law,  in  whom  she  had  the  sympathy  which  John,  in 
spite  of  his  many  virtues  as  a  husband,  lacked.  Jamie 
could  delight  in  her  children  even  as  she  did.  He  could 
understand  that  they  were  a  part  of  herself,  that  the  baby 
was  still  an  essential  piece  of  her  physical  existence,  that 
she  lived  through  them  and  was  only  the  more  herself 

436 


MRS.  ELI  AS  BROADBENT  437 

for  it.  He  could  be  a  child  with  the  children — (he  had 
learned  that  from  Mrs.  Leslie) — and  she  found  soon 
that  he  was  almost  like  another  child  to  her,  and  could 
be  so  without  loss  of  dignity  or  hurt  to  his  vanity.  He 
saw  and  allowed  her  own  dignity  as  a  woman  practising 
her  womanhood  and  revelling  in  it  without  coquetry. 
He  could  idealise  her  without  making  her  inaccessible, 
without  diminishing  her  humanity,  and  for  the  first  time 
there  was  room  in  his  world  for  woman,  who  had  been 
hitherto,  so  almost  monastic  had  been  his  life,  only  an 
exasperation  and  an  obsession.  She  was  entirely  frank 
with  him  as  no  woman  had  ever  been,  entirely  with- 
out that  vain  teasing  which  makes  frankness  impossible. 
She  accepted  her  husband's  dictum  that  women  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  important  problems  of  life  be- 
cause she  was  unaware  of  any  problem.  All  her  desires 
had  easily  and  naturally  been  satisfied  and,  since  it  had 
been  so  easy  and  natural,  other  people's  desires  could 
equally  be  satisfied.  She  had  so  much  that  it  seemed  to 
her  unreasonable  and  foolish  to  distract  herself  by  wor- 
rying because  she  had  not  something  more,  and  because 
she  found  something  more  in  James,  she  did  not,  for 
that,  think  ill  of  John.  Indeed  Jamie  only  made  her 
the  more  aware  of  what  she  had  and  more  grateful  for  it. 
She  was  sorry  for  him.  The  house  seemed  so  empty 
to  her.  It  was  just  a  house  in  which  he  ate  and  slept 
and  it  was  on  the  whole  uncomfortable.  It  lacked  all 
the  little  graces  that  a  woman  who  loved  him  could 
have  brought  into  it.  She  thought  him  very  wonderful 
and  because  he  was  that  he  needed  such  graces.  There 
was  trouble  with  Tibby  who  did  not  at  all  like  being  told 
that  she  must  prepare  a  more  dainty  table  and  give  more 
attention  to  the  cleanliness  of  the  linen  and  provide  a 
greater  variety  of  food.  Sophia  did  not  appreciate 


438  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

Tibby's  position  in  the  household  and  criticised  her  work 
with  no  regard  for  her  feelings.  As  if  Tibby  did  not 
know  exactly  what  Jamie  liked  and  disliked !  However 
she  bottled  up  her  feelings  and  only  let  them  loose  upon 
the  Portuguese  with  whom  she  had  managed  somehow 
to  break  down  the  barrier  of  language.  Tibby  was 
alarmed.  It  was  clear  to  her  that  John  and  Tom  were 
better  fed  than  Jamie,  whose  alliance  with  Sophia  was 
also  disturbing. — "Never  once  has  he  complained,"  said 
Tibby. — "And  never  would,"  returned  Sophia.  "I  am 
sure  you  do  your  best,  but,  believe  me,  I  know  what  men 
like." — "What's  meat  to  one  is  poison  to  another,"  pro- 
tested Tibby. — "Certainly,  but  there  are  little  things 
that  they  all  like,  and  they  make  all  the  difference.  It 
is  not  so  much  in  the  cooking  as  in  the  serving,  nor 
so  much  in  the  cleaning  as  in  the  arranging." — "It  is 
small  use  arranging  for  Jamie,"  said  Tibby,  "for  an 
untidier  man  there  never  was." 

Sophia  went  away  feeling  that  she  would  never  rest 
content  until  she  had  taken  Jamie  away  from  that  house. 
Margaret  obviously  wished  it  to  be  like  a  Scots  manse, 
bare  and  frugal,  and  Jamie  was  not  a  Scots  minister, 
but  a  hard-working  man  blessed  or  cursed  with  a  rarely 
sensitive  nature. — "He  must  marry,"  said  Sophia.  "It 
is  perfectly  absurd  that  he  is  not  married,  and  perfectly 
wicked  of  those  two  women  to  keep  their  claws  in  him." 

To  think  of  a  thing  was  for  Sophia  to  do  it.  She 
never  went  out  without  looking  at  every  young  woman 
she  met  and  wondering  if  she  would  do,  regarding  them 
from  every  point  of  view,  the  natural,  the  physical,  the 
aesthetic,  the  practical.  There  was  no  nonsense  about 
Sophia:  a  wife  must  be  pleasing,  healthy,  happy  and 
sensible.  Jamie's  wife  must  be  young,  amiable,  and 
strong:  young,  because  he  was  in  many  ways  too  old, 


MRS.  ELI  AS  BROADBENT  439 

amiable,  because  he  had  moods,  strong,  because  he  was 
nervous,  and  with  a  nervous  woman  might  produce  un- 
healthy and  abnormal  children,  and  children  were  ab- 
solutely necessary  for  him.  So  eager  was  Sophia  in  this 
search  that  she  postponed  her  visit  to  the  Greigs'  three 
times  and  at  last  sent  John  off  without  her,  making  as 
an  excuse  that  she  had  found  a  very  good  doctor  who 
wished  to  have  her  under  his  eye  for  some  time  longer — 
(she  had  had  a  very  difficult  time  with  the  baby  in 
Madeira  and  had  had  no  proper  attendance,  and  there 
were  after-effects  which  might  or  might  not  be  serious). 
This  doctor,  Elias  Broadbent,  it  transpired,  had  married 
the  mother  of  a  school  friend  of  Sophia's,  Belle  Wood, 
and  Belle,  hearing  of  her,  arranged  a  meeting  and 
brought  with  her  her  young  sister,  Catherine,  a  girl  of 
eighteen.  No  sooner  did  Sophia  set  eyes  on  Catherine 
than  she  decided  that  here  was  the  wife  for  Jamie.  The 
girl  was  beautiful:  tall,  fair,  radiant  with  health  and 
of  an  obvious  innocence  and  purity,  placid  and  immobile. 
She  was  neither  awkward  nor  shy,  but  always  at  her 
ease,  if  anything  lazy  because  she  was  so  certain  of 
giving  pleasure  with  her  beauty.  Belle  on  the  other  hand 
was  a  plump  little  chatterbox,  full  of  wiles  and  flattery, 
extremely  vain  and  obviously  a  little  anxious  at  being  left 
unmarried.  She  was  consumed  with  interest  in  Sophia's 
marriage,  her  children,  her  husband,  her  voyage  to  the 
antipodes,  but  for  all  Belle's  efforts,  Sophia  could  not 
keep  her  attention  from  the  younger  sister  and  she  saw 
then  that  Belle  was  afraid  of  this  beautiful  rival  and 
hated  her.  Belle  was  full  of  grievances  and  conveyed, 
without  actually  saying  it,  the  idea  that  she  had  been 
greatly  wronged.  She  had  had  many  offers  but  just  at 
the  time  her  mother  had  been  preoccupied  with  catching 
Dr.  Broadbent,  and  no  young  man  had  had  the  temerity 


440  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

to  approach  her.  It  was  with  an  amazing  skill  that  Belle 
laid  bare  the  whole  story  of  her  wrongs  so  that  not  a 
word  of  it  should  be  intelligible  to  Catherine.  Sophia 
felt  that  she  was  possessed  of  every  detail.  She  was  so 
sympathetic  and  kindly  that  Belle  invited  her  most  pres- 
singly  to  come  and  see  her  at  home  and  to  make  the 
acquaintance  of  her  mother. 

Mrs.  Elias  Broadbent  was  a  formidable  woman,  large, 
with  a  greedy  mouth  and  hard  eyes  that  shone  like 
polished  pebbles.  She  was  the  daughter  of  an  Arch- 
deacon, a  Northrop,  and  she  let  Sophia  know  within 
five  minutes  that  the  Northrops  had  their  seat  in  York- 
shire and  she  had  been  married  very  young  to  Mr.  Wood, 
one  of  the  Warwickshire  Woods,  and  she  had  been  left 
a  widow  and  had  remained  so  for  many  years  because 
there  were  so  few  gentlemen  in  Thrigsby.  She  was 
swollen  with  pride  over  her  capture  of  Dr.  Broadbent 
•who  was  one  of  the  leading  physicians  of  the  town. — 
"And  how  interesting  that  you  were  at  school  with 
Belle,  Mrs.  Lawrence." — "Lawrie/'  said  Sophia.  "The 
Lawries  are  well  known  in  Thrigsby,  though  not  so  well 
known  as  my  own  family,  the  Greigs." — Greig!  The 
name  worked  wonders.  Mrs.  Broadbent  welcomed 
Sophia  as  an  equal.  Her  husband  had  attended  Donald 
Greig  through  a  long  and  dangerous  illness,  and,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  had  been  through  Angus  Greig  that  the 
doctor  had  made  his  reputation. 

In  her  mother's  presence  Belle  was  no  longer  a  chat- 
terbox. She  was  almost  as  silent  as  Catherine,  and  it 
was  patent  that  the  two  young  women  had  no  kind  of 
interest  for  their  mother,  who  was  entirely  absorbed  in 
her  new  life  and  rather  resented  her  children  as  re- 
minders that  there  had  ever  been  any  other.  Tea  was 
brought  in,  with  muffins  and  three  varieties  of  rich 


MRS.  ELI  AS  BROADBENT  441 

cake.  Mrs.  Broadbent  ate  three  muffins  and  two  slices 
of  cake  and  gave  herself  up  to  the  pleasure  of  eating. 
The  younger  women  hardly  touched  a  morsel,  but  sat 
like  ministrants  while  Mrs.  Broadbent,  almost  like  a 
priestess,  accomplished  the  ceremony  of  the  meal.— 
"If  this  is  tea,"  thought  Sophia,  "what  must  dinner  be 
like?" — Then  her  mind  began  to  play  about  Catherine, 
for  whom  she  felt  vaguely  sorry,  to  be  so  young,  so 
lovely  and  so  cruelly  neglected.  Thinking  of  her  in 
connection  with  her  purpose,  Catherine  seemed  like  a 
ripe  plum  on  a  wall  that  would  come  off  at  a  touch. 

Sophia  was  always  liked  by  women  and  she  was  urged 
to  come  again.  She  explained  that  she  was  staying  with 
her  mother-in-law  and  hoped  Mrs.  Broadbent  would  call. 

A  week  later  Mrs.  Broadbent  called  and,  with  her, 
Belle.  It  was  on  a  Saturday  and  Jamie  was  in,  having 
brought  Fanny  to  her  periodical  tea-party  with  Tibby 
in  the  kitchen.  Belle  had  made  inquiries  about  Jamie 
and  had  heard  much  to  his  credit  and  set  herself  to  tickle 
his  vanity  and  to  attract  him.  But  he  detested  her  co- 
quetry and  even  more  he  hated  Mrs.  Broadbent  who  sat 
with  a  hard  wandering  eye  taking  in  the  bare  furniture 
and  heavily  patronising  Margaret,  who  fascinated  her, 
as  a  woman  who  had  cherished  her  widowhood  and 
tended  it  most  lovingly.  The  atmosphere  awed  Mrs. 
Broadbent.  She  was  sensitive  to  its  aristocratic  quality 
and  drank  it  in  greedily.  It  was  so  acute  a  pleasure  to 
her  that  she  almost  ignored  the  food  that  was  set  before 
her. 

To  Jamie  the  woman  was  a  living  offence  and  as 
soon  as  he  could  he  made  excuses  and  escaped.  He  was 
very  angry  with  Sophia  and  reproached  her  bitterly. 
Sophia  replied:  "She  is  not  so  bad  as  all  that.  She 
simply  doesn't  matter.  I  asked  her  because  I  wanted 


442  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

you  to  know  the  Doctor  who  is  a  really  interesting  man, 
a  man  of  science,  who  would  be  very  good  for  you.  And 
he  is  interested  in  you,  besides.  I  hoped  she  would  bring 
her  younger  daughter  who  is  a  great  beauty,  a  lovely 
creature  and  most  unhappy,  as  you  can  imagine  with  a 
mother  like  that."  The  mention  of  beauty  in  distress 
caught  Jamie's  attention  as  it  was  intended  that  it 
should. — "If  she  is  anything  like  her  mother,"  he  said, 
"she  cannot  be  beautiful  and  girls  always  grow  like  their 
mothers  in  twenty  years'  time." — "She  is  not  at  all  like 
her  mother,"  answered  Sophia,  "and  she  is  a  perfect 
angel,  for,  though  she  suffers  a  real  martyrdom,  she  is 
entirely  unspoiled  and  needs  nothing  but  friendship.  If 
she  could  meet  your  mother  I  am  sure  it  would  make  all 
the  difference  in  the  world  to  her." 

The  next  move  was  that  Sophia  brought  the  Doctor 
home  with  her  one  evening,  with  the  result  that  he  and 
Jamie  sat  up  until  two  in  the  morning,  Jamie  thrilled 
with  the  pleasure  of  meeting  a  man  of  ideas  and  skilled 
mind  (though  it  made  him  feel  hopelessly  muddle- 
headed)  and  the  Doctor  delighted  to  find  a  young  and 
eager  mental  curiosity  prepared  to  discuss  science  with- 
out reference  to  theology.  The  views  of  each  were 
complementary  to  those  of  the  other  and  each  felt  that 
at  last  he  had  met  a  thoroughly  sensible  man.  Their 
conversation  was  entirely  abstract  and  impersonal  and 
very  exciting  so  that  Jamie  was  eager  for  more  and 
eagerly  accepted  an  invitation  to  dine  at  the  Doctor's 
house  on  the  following  Tuesday. 

He  forgot  to  make  a  note  of  the  exact  time  and  arrived 
half-an-hour  early.  The  Doctor  was  out.  Mrs.  Broad- 
bent  was  dressing  and  asked  Belle  to  go  down.  Belle 
knew  that  Jamie  was  hopeless  for  herself:  also  she  dis- 
liked any  man  who  was  impervious  to  her  coquetry :  and 


MRS.  ELIAS  BROADBENT  443 

she  sent  Catherine,  a  radiant  vision  in  pale  blue.  She 
introduced  herself: — "I'm  the  younger  Miss  Wood," 
she  said.  "My  mother  will  be  down  soon." — So  this 
was  the  beauty!  Jamie  was  dazzled  by  her.  His  blood 
went  singing  in  his  veins  for  the  sheer  joyous  delight 
of  her.  He  held  her  hand  for  a  full  minute  in  the 
oblivious  happiness  that  he  had  in  saluting  her  beauty, 
in  the  pure  freshness  with  which  it  filled  him  like  the 
air  of  a  spring  morning. — "You  must  excuse  me,"  she 
said,  "if  I  do  not  entertain  you  very  well,  but  I  have  only 
just  begun  to  meet  people  and  I  do  not  know  yet  what 
they  talk  about."— "If  they  are  friends,"  said  he,  "it 
does  not  matter  much  what  they  talk  about,  and  if  they 
are  not  friends  they  need  not  talk  at  all." — She  responded 
instantly  to  the  kindness  in  his  voice  and  she  accepted 
the  whole-hearted  homage  in  his  eyes.  She  was  used 
to  homage,  but  of  a  furtive  and  unwilling  kind.  With 
this  went  the  whole  nature  of  the  man  in  absolute  sim- 
plicity. All  the  seeds  of  warm  human  love  that  had 
been  planted  in  him  during  his  days  with  Sophia  grew 
up  to  flower,  and  Catherine  became  at  once  an  image  of 
that  love.  Her  beauty  was  worthy  of  it,  spiritualised  it, 
rid  it  of  the  excessive  comfort  which  in  Sophia  had 
oppressed  him.  That  gone,  he  was,  on  the  instant,  in 
love.  His  whole  force  was  concentrated  on  the  girl  and 
he  was  entirely,  deliciously  happy  and  reckless,  sensitive 
to  her  innocence,  instinctively  careful  lest  anything  in 
his  feelings  should  hurt  her  or  rouse  her  too  suddenly. 
He  rejoiced  too  in  the  chill  of  her  modesty.  O !  to  melt 
her,  to  waken  her,  to  set  her  spirit  free,  to  catch  her 
soul  and  never  let  it  go.  At  once  he  was  her  wooer 
most  supple  and  most  skilful,  not  dreaming  of  success 
or  failure,  not  caring  what  might  come,  but  absorbed 
wholly  in  his  own  immediate  surrender,  in  the  joy  of 


444  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  wooing.  It  mattered  nothing  what  he  said  to  her. 
The  barest  words  formed  a  song,  and  her  voice,  her 
gesture,  her  smile  were  more  beguilement  for  his  heart. 
In  one  moment  all  his  straining  after  love,  after  life, 
after  creative  consciousness  of  life  was  snapped.  He 
was  in  a  lovely  ecstasy,  hovering  nearer  and  nearer  to 
beauty.  Catherine  spoke  no  word,  made  no  movement, 
but  he  at  once  translated  it  into  evidence  of  her  perfec- 
tion, and  nothing  could  mar  the  pure  delight  of  that 
evening.  He  found  Mrs.  Broadbent  vastly  amusing  and 
indeed  when  she  could  give  vent  to  her  malice  she  could 
be  witty.  He  flirted  openly  with  Belle  since  it  was 
plain  to  both  of  them  that  it  was  nothing  but  nonsense 
and  such  flirtation  was  a  good  outlet  for  the  fun  that 
frothed  up  in  him.  How  delicious  the  food  was,  how 
good  the  wine,  how  charming  the  gleaming  tablecloth, 
the  shining  white  plates  and  the  sparkling  glass  and 
silver!  The  table  floated  before  him  and  he  half  ex- 
pected it  to  be  spirited  away  like  the  feast  of  the  Barme- 
cide. Indeed  that  seemed  to  have  happened  when  he  was 
left  alone  with  the  Doctor  and  had  to  listen  to  talk  about 
comparative  osteology  and  the  evolution  of  bone  struc- 
tures. What  did  it  matter  to  him  that  the  bear  and  the 
horse  were  most  nearly  akin,  or  that  either  was  in  the 
least  like  man?  What  did  it  matter  that  he  had  bones 
himself,  and,  if  he  had,  why  talk  about  it?  Bones  did 
their  work  well  enough  in  carrying  the  body  about,  and 
if  they  broke  there  were  doctors  to  mend  them,  and 
that  being  so,  why  was  not  this  particular  doctor  away 
about  his  business  ? 

Dr.  Broadbent  drew  his  own  conclusions  and  smiled 
at  the  alacrity  with  which  Jamie  sprang  to  his  feet  when 
he  said:  "Shall  we  join  the  ladies?"  He  was  also  a 
little  distressed,  for  he  had  thought  Jamie  a  sensible 


MRS.  ELIAS  BROADBENT  445 

man  and  had  expected  him  to  share  his  own  cynical  but 
thoroughly  healthy  attitude  of  approval  of  the  arrange- 
ments provided  for  the  continuance  of  the  race.  And 
lo!  Jamie  had  lost  his  head  like  any  young  moon-calf. 

When  that  night  he  confided  his  impression  to  his 
wife  she  remarked: — "It  would  be  a  very  good  thing. 
Katy  wants  a  man  of  character  to  knock  the  nonsense 
out  of  her,  and  he  is  certainly  very  good-looking." 

At  once  Mrs.  Broadbent  informed  Belle  and  Belle  told 
Sophia,  and  the  three  of  them  laboured  in  the  good 
cause,  arranging  that  Jamie  should  be  left  alone  with 
Catherine,  who  received  his  attentions  unmoved  and  as 
a  matter  of  course.  She  was  of  a  slow  nature  and  could 
not  easily  grasp  a  new  idea,  but  she  accepted  Jamie's 
wooing.  It  was  certainly  very  pleasant  to  be  with  him 
and  he  was  kinder  to  her  than  anybody  had  ever  been. 
But  until  he  felt  that  she  was  moved  he  could  not  speak 
his  love  to  her.  He  waited,  to  the  exasperated  fury 
of  Mrs.  Broadbent,  Belle  and  Sophia.  Mrs.  Broadbent 
and  Belle  set  themselves  to  make  Catherine's  life  a  hell 
to  her  and  concentrated  themselves  on  the  task  of  driv- 
ing her  out  of  the  house.  Once  they  were  assured  that 
they  had  Jamie's  arms  to  drive  her  into  they  had  no 
compunction  about  it.  Both  were  jealous  of  the  beauty, 
Belle  for  reasons  already  stated,  and  Mrs.  Broadbent 
because  the  Doctor  was  more  appreciative  of  her  daugfr 
ter  than  she  liked. 

At  last  one  day,  when  Jamie  had  been  more  tender 
than  usual,  Catherine  burst  into  tears  and  when  he  com- 
forted her,  petted  her,  patted  her  head  and  stroked  her 
pretty  hair,  she  told  him  that  her  life  was  a  perfect 
misery  to  her.  Then  he  could  refrain  no  longer  and 
poured  out  his  love  for  her  and  said  he  would  love  her 
always  and  protect  her  and  be  good  to  her  and  she  must 


446  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

love  him  and  they  would  be  happy  together.  She  clung 
to  him  and  he  kissed  her  and  she  accepted  his  kiss  as 
a  child  might,  and  it  seemed  to  him  then,  in  his  mood 
of  passionate  chivalry,  right  that  perfect  beauty  should 
so  accept  his  kiss. 

A  few  minutes  later  Mrs.  Broadbent  entered  the  room 
and  was  informed  that  he  wished  to  be  engaged  to  her 
daughter  and  to  be  married  immediately.  She  already 
had  exact  knowledge  of  his  material  condition  and  pros- 
pects, mopped  at  her  eyes,  took  him  to  her  capacious 
bosom  and,  to  his  astonished  horror,  kissed  him.  Cath- 
erine rushed  weeping  to  her  room,  and  he  was  left  feel- 
ing extraordinarily  foolish.  All  the  elation  passed  from 
him  to  Mrs.  Broadbent,  Belle,  and  Sophia.  Catherine 
was  now  as  much  petted  as  before  she  had  been  bullied. 
He  was  hardly  allowed  access  to  her.  The  date  of  the 
wedding  was  fixed.  Sophia  took  charge  of  him  and  .made 
him  take  a  house,  far  removed  from  Margaret,  and 
furnish  it.  When  he  was  not  being  worried  by  Sophia 
he  had  to  cope  with  the  thousand  and  one  suggestions 
put  forward  by  his  mother.  Scarcely  had  his  mother 
let  him  go  than  Agnes  pounced  on  him  with  advice,  and 
hardly  had  Agnes  turned  her  back  than  he  found  that 
he  had  to  deal  with  lawyers  and  go  into  the  complicated 
maze  of  a  settlement,  and  that  settlement  had  to  be 
agreed  with  other  lawyers  representing  Catherine's  small 
inheritance  from  her  grandfather.  Then  he  had  to  meet 
four  families  of  the  Woods  and  five  of  the  Northrops, 
not  to  mention  a  Broadbent  or  two.  And  Catherine  on 
her  side  was  so  bewildered  that  he  was  unable  to  get 
two  sensible  remarks  from  her  in  a  month,  so  that  at 
last  he  was  driven  to  take  refuge  in  science  and  philoso- 
phy with  the  Doctor.  That  had  the  unfortunate  effect 
of  clearing  his  brain  so  that  he  began  to  take  a  detached 


MRS.  ELI  AS  BROADBENT  447 

view  of  his  marriage.  Certainly  he  loved  Catherine,  but 
he  resented  the  indubitable  fact  that  marriage  had  al- 
ready interfered  with  its  natural  course,  namely  the 
lovely  wooing  of  the  woman  in  a  world  that  because 
of  it  had  become  all  fun  and  beauty,  all  blossom  and 
sweet  scents  and  sunshine  all  aquiver  and  sweeter  than 
honey :  an  entire  forget  fulness  of  all  save  the  body,  which 
had  become  light  as  thistledown,  hovering  in  constant 
glee  upon  the  warm  winds  of  love,  blowing  through  it 
so  that  it  trembled,  both  from  the  ecstasy  of  the  gentle 
movement  and  from  the  inward  knowledge  of  the  sacri- 
ficial sacrament  that  was  to  come.  And  all  that  had 
been  broken  down,  the  blossoms  were  trampled  under- 
foot, the  body's  ecstasy  was  chilled,  and  every  human 
being  round  them  shut  them  out  and  busily  prepared  to 
isolate  them  for  ever,  to  kill  the  ecstasy,  to  rob  it  of  the 
light,  to  deny  it  access  to  the  world  that  through  the 
woman  it  loved  so  passionately.  As  his  mind  was  cleared 
again  Jamie  knew  it,  knew  that  his  ecstasy  was  being 
denied  and  utterly  ignored.  He  knew  Sophia  what  she 
was,  a  woman  living  in  the  flesh,  and  he  hated  her  for 
it.  She  had  wakened  desire  in  him  and  quite  calmly 
would  see  it  die  because  she  knew  no  other  desire  than 
the  desire  of  the  flesh.  She  ached  with  that  desire  and 
she  had  her  man  to  satisfy  it.  Her'  breasts  ached  to 
give  suck  and  she  had  her  children  to  satisfy  that.  Ah! 
there  was  the  evil  that  he  had  felt  so  menacing;  not 
money,  not  meanness,  not  ugliness,  not  any  trivial  lust 
nor  any  blundering  folly,  but  the  callous  confinement  of 
desire  to  the  flesh,  so  that  all  was  pleasure  and  nowhere 
any  joy.  Yet  he  loved  Catherine  and  would  not  sur- 
render his  idea  of  her  beauty  for  which,  in  offering,  he 
had  nothing  but  his  ecstasy,  for  nothing  else  was  worthy. 
And  that  was  perishing  for  lack  of  sustenance.  Cath- 


448  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

erine  was  always  with  Sophia,  who  would  poison  her, 
or  with  that  vile  old  woman,  her  mother.  He  wished 
to  go  to  her  as  a  bridegroom  to  his  bride  and  in  all 
these  preparations  he  could  see  nothing  but  the  base 
delivery  of  a  slave  to  her  master.  Again  and  again  he 
would  tell  himself  that  joy  must  live,  that  nothing  can 
kill  joy. — Can  joy  live  if  it  be  denied?  And  what  was 
there  anywhere  in  his  surroundings  that  did  not  deny  it  ? 
Only  his  mother  with  her  joy  pent  up  in  the  dim  hope 
and  misty  promise  of  Heaven,  and  the  children  with 
their  little  joy  still  unaware  of  denial. 

He  wrote  every  day  to  Catherine  and  as  he  grew 
desperate  poured  out  his  ecstasy  in  poems,  but  her  letters 
were  few  and  unavailing  for  she  could  express  little  on 
paper. 

As  the  time  drew  near  one  idea,  one  image  grew  in 
his  mind,  the  figure  of  Tibby,  formed  out  of  the  few 
glances  he  caught  from  her.  She  was  a  figure  of  silent 
sorrow,  gazing  down  upon  him  with  eyes  full  of  wisdom 
and  a  clear  knowledge  past  understanding.  Like  a 
strange  woman  looming  out  of  darkness  she  was  and 
there  was  in  her  a  feeling  that  crept  into  the  marrow  of 
his  bones.  Once  or  twice  she  was  so  real  to  him  that 
he  thought  it  must  be  she  and  he  said:  "What  do  you 
want,  Tibby?"  And  then  she  vanished.  At  last  he 
learned  not  to  speak,  and  dared  to  meet  her  eyes  and  to 
let  the  feeling  in  her  go  racking  through  him.  It  racked 
through  him  and  crept  into  his  poor  starving  ecstasy  and 
passed  through  it  and  grew  into  something  beyond 
agony,  beyond  all  joy,  into  clear  knowledge  of  the  equal 
and  unending  strife  between  good  and  evil.  Then  he 
was  flung  back  into  consciousness  and  left  to  take  up  his 
ecstasy,  his  dread,  his  hatred  of  the  evil  that  denied  his 
joy  as  the  implement  of  his  life,  the  instrument  where- 


MRS.  ELI  AS  BROADBENT  449 

with  his  emotions  must  shape  his  love  and  give  it  grace. 
Strangely  as  he  toiled  back  into  this  smaller  conscious- 
ness the  figure  of  Tibby  lost  its  strangeness  and  dark- 
ness fell  away  from  it  and  she  appeared  more  like  the 
Tibby  of  every  day.  And  every  day  he  was  acutely 
aware  of  her,  a  figure  of  silent  sorrow.  Most  plainly 
she  was  suffering  and  he  could  not  endure  the  thought 
of  it. 

On  the  night  before  his  wedding  he  went  down  to  the 
kitchen.  He  found  Tibby  asleep.  He  stood  in  the  door- 
way and  watched  her.  The  shadows  fell  queerly  upon 
her  face  and  turned  it  into  a  grotesque.  It  was  like  a 
mask  of  suffering.  The  deepset  eyes  were  like  black 
holes.  There  were  deep  shadows  under  her  high  cheek- 
bones. He  thought  for  one  horrid  moment  that  she 
was  dead.  Could  death  look  so  strong,  could  there  be 
so  fierce  a  will  in  death?  Her  lips  parted  and  she 
moaned  a  little,  and  slowly  she  raised  her  right  arm  and 
drew  it  across  her  eyes.  Then  her  arm  fell  again  and 
her  hand  dropped  into  her  lap.  He  watched  her  and 
her  breathing  came  heavily.  He  thought,  without  pity, 
simply,  of  her  life.  Day  in,  day  out,  drudging,  serving 
faithfully  an  old  woman  and  a  foolish  man,  keeping 
them  from  the  distasteful  practices  of  daily  life,  with 
little  thanks  and  rare  words  of  encouragement,  even  of 
recognition.  Ugly,  uncouth,  of  a  type  to  call  down 
upon  herself  the  laughter  of  unworthy  men.  Yet  there 
was  a  rare  spirit  in  her  and  an  indomitable  pride,  that 
should,  surely,  have  been  broken  by  such  a  life.  As 
she  lay  sleeping  and  he  watched  her,  he  saw  in  her  face 
a  beauty  such  as  he  had  seen  upon  no  other  face,  a 
serenity,  a  clear  exalted  dignity,  a  lovely  proud  purity, 
a  confident  knowledge  whereby  that  which  had  come  to 
him  in  his  agony  seemed  small  indeed.  There  was  no 


450  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

room  for  pity,  no  need  for  it,  none  for  love,  as  he  had 
known  it,  none  for  that  ecstasy  which  had  seemed  to 
thrill  through  all  the  world.  These  things  were  passing 
and  of  time.  There  was  in  Tibby,  in  that  strange  mask 
of  hers,  the  sure  knowledge  of  the  omnipotence  of  love. 
She  opened  her  eyes  and  a  veiled  light  shone  in  them. 
As  she  saw  him  the  veil  was  dropped  and  the  light  blazed. 
She  did  not  move.  She  made  no  sound.  He  knew  that 
she  loved  him  and  that  he  loved  her,  and  that  their  love 
would  make  two  worlds,  his  in  the  likeness  of  marriage, 
citizenship,  success  or  failure,  and  such-like  things;  and 
hers  grey,  dull,  monotonous  and  beyond  all  hope  of 
change. — "I  wanted  to  say  good-bye  to  you,  Tibby," 
said  he. — "Good-bye,  Jamie,"  said  she. — She  folded  her 
hands  in  her  lap,  turned  her  head  with  a  jerk,  as  though 
it  needed  some  violence  to  take  her  eyes  from  his,  and 
gazed  into  the  glowing  fire.  The  lamp  on  the  table 
flickered  and  died  out.  He  lingered  for  a  moment. 
She  was  no  longer  a  figure  of  sorrow  but  of  patience. 
She  needed  neither  comfort  nor  pity.  There  was  no 
emptiness  in  her  life,  but  the  enduring  peace  of  knowl- 
edge in  innocence. — "Good-night,  Tibby,"  he  said. — 
"Good-night,"  said  she.  He  drew  the  door  to  but  could 
not  bear  to  shut  it.  He  felt  that  she  was  with  him,  and 
would  be  with  him  whatever  might  befall.  As  he  turned 
away  he  found  that  he  was  trembling  and  could  hardly 
walk.  He  groped  his  way  back  along  the  passage,  back 
to  the  duty  and  the  joy  that  awaited  him  in  life,  in 
the  life  that  could  take  cognisable  tangible  shape,  the 
comic  life  of  every  day. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

CATHERINE 


SO  he  was  married.  Catherine  was  delivered  over  to 
him  by  her  stepfather,  with  the  priest  as  interme- 
diary. It  was  extraordinarily  like  a  commercial  transac- 
tion, with  amazing  complications  to  transfer  the  goods 
from  the  producer  to  the  consumer,  and  the  middleman 
taking  more  profit  than  his  services  seemed  to  entitle 
him  to.  Jamie  thought  of  that  in  the  middle  of  the 
service  and  the  whole  affair  which  till  then  had  been 
depressing  and  vulgar  became  splendid  farce.  Here  was 
the  business  with  which  plays  and  novels  were  usually 
rounded  off  actually  happening  to  himself  and  the  fun 
was  only  just  beginning.  Were  he  and  Catherine  going 
to  live  happily  ever  after?  He  hoped  so,  but  he  had  his 
doubts.  He  did  not  at  all  agree  with  the  tone  of  the 
marriage  service  which  was  as  blunt  and  cynical  as  a  bill 
of  lading.  Catherine  was  heavily  veiled  and  orange- 
blossomed  and  so  dressed  as  to  look  as  little  like  a  woman 
as  possible.  He  disliked  the  phrase  "wedded  wife," 
which  sounded  heavy  and  ominous.  Certainly  he  was 
in  a  difficult  and  fastidious  mood,  but  he  knew  what  he 
felt  and  he  disliked  his  feelings  being  interfered  with 
by  inappropriate  and  ponderous  sounds.  In  Scotland  he 
could  have  had  the  matter  over  in  a  few  moments  by 
the  holding  out  of  his  hand  and  the  clear  expression 

451 


452  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

of  his  intention  to  live  with  the  woman  as  his  wife. 
These  English  were  so  pompous.  They  could  do,  say 
and  think  nothing  without  insisting  on  its  importance, 
for  no  other  reason  than  that  it  was  they  who  were 
doing,  saying  and  thinking  it.  They  had  always  been 
devastating  to  his  feelings,  and  here  in  the  face  of  one 
of  the  most  cherished  of  their  institutions  he  began 
to  understand  why.  It  was  simply  that  they  had  no 
notion  of  adjusting  the  means  to  an  end,  and  became 
so  entangled  in  the  means  they  employed  that  they  lost 
sight  of  the  end  altogether.  He  did  not  yet  desire 
Catherine  as  a  wife.  That  might  be,  and  again  it  might 
not.  He  had  thought  the  matter  over  carefully.  Mar- 
riage was  to  him  a  sacrament.  He  was  quite  clear  about 
that.  It  meant  the  coming  of  the  bridegroom  to  the 
bride,  with  all  its  mortal  consequences,  the  fruition  or 
the  death  of  love.  To  these  people  marriage  was  only 
a  contract,  and,  as  the  contract  was  indissoluble,  it  was 
a  means  so  bungled  that  it  had  become  an  end.  That 
was  why  novels  and  plays  were  rounded  off  with  it, 
because  the  English  were  so  entangled  in  their  means  that 
they  could  look  no  further.  They  were  entangled  in 
marriage  just  as  they  were  entangled  in  commerce  and 
in  Empire.  What  on  earth  had  happened  to  them, 
thought  Jamie,  as  he  walked,  hurt  and  bewildered,  from 
the  altar  steps  to  the  vestry — what  had  happened  to  them 
since  Shakespeare  had  rounded  off  the  Midsummer- 
Night's  Dream  with  a  marriage  wherein  were  united 
labour,  intellect  and  fairyland?  The  marriages  of 
Theseus  and  Hippolyte  and  of  the  Grecian  lovers  had 
helped  him  greatly  in  his  approach  to  his  own  marriage. 
It  should  be  a  blessing  of  the  sense,  a  kindling  of  the 
spirit,  a  mutual  surrender  and  a  new  creation.  And  these 
people  had  made  it  as  ugly  as  it  could  well  be.  They  had 


CATHERINE  453 


tricked  out  his  bride  until  she  looked  like  a  figure  off  her 
own  wedding  cake ;  they  were  stolid  in  their  demeanour 
and  on  the  whole  unhappy;  the  whole  ceremony  was 
gloomy  and  full  of  warnings  and  forebodings.  Almost 
everything  possible  was  done  to  rob  him  of  his  delight  in 
Catherine.  Why  mention  worldly  goods?  All  that  had 
been  arranged  by  the  lawyers,  if  there  were  any  worldly 
goods.  Why  talk  of  sickness  at  such  a  time  ?  Why  drag 
in  death  ?  And  why  obedience  ?  He  had  certainly  no  in- 
tention of  commanding  Catherine  to  do  anything,  and  if 
she  did  not  obey  him  he  would  have  no  remedy  since 
there  was  no  amending  the  contract.  No,  the  marriage 
ceremony  was  muddle-headed,  and,  like  the  English  who 
had  evolved  it,  without  purpose,  unless  it  was  their  pur- 
pose to  kill  joy.  He  had  noticed  that  trick  of  theirs. 
They  could  never  believe  themselves  to  be  serious  unless 
they  were  solemn.  Perhaps,  he  thought,  in  a  race  of 
humorists  that  was  inevitable. 

He  did  not  at  all  like  these  busy  thoughts,  but  it  was 
not  his  fault.  The  marriage  ceremony  would  not  admit 
his  feelings  and  he  must  win  through  it  as  best  he  could 
and  hope  manfully  that  when  at  last  he  was  allowed 
to  take  his  bride  away  he  would  be  able  to  obliterate  the 
painful  impressions  of  the  past  few  weeks,  and  to  wipe 
out  all  traces  of  Mrs.  Broadbent,  Belle  and  Sophia.  As 
he  drove  away  from  the  church  with  Catherine  he  was 
happy  to  find  the  ceremony  becoming  fantastic  and  amus- 
ing in  his  mind.  He  asked  Catherine  to  remove  her 
veil  as  he  had  not  had  a  clear  sight  of  her  that  day. 
She  said  she  would  wait  until  they  got  home.  Jokingly 
he  said :  "I  order  you  to  take  it  off." — "Certainly  not," 
she  replied,  and  not  another  word  passed  between  them 
until  they  reached  the  house.  Then  she  was  taken  from 
him  once  more  and  he  was  left  with  his  father-in-law, 


454  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

his  brother,  and  his  mother. — "I  shall  miss  you,  dear 
Jamie,"  said  Margaret,  who  had  obviously  been  weep- 
ing quietly  to  herself. — "Miss  him?"  said  Tom.  "We're 
all  going  to  look  after  you  now." — "You're  very  good, 
Tom,"  said  Margaret,  "but  somehow  I  never  believed 
that  Jamie  would  marry." — "It's  never  too  late  to  settle 
down,"  replied  Tom.  "And  I'm  only  too  glad  to  do  for 
his  kitchen  what  he  did  for  mine."  So  the  talk  went 
on,  forced  joviality  with  an  undercurrent  of  lugubrious- 
ness  that  flung  Jamie  into  a  profound  depression  and 
made  him  wonder  whether  after  all  they  were  not  in  the 
right  and  he  was  in  the  wrong.  Nearly  everybody  pres- 
ent, except  Belle,  was  married,  and  they  all  had  the  air 
of  being  sorry  for  him  even  when  they  shook  him  by 
the  hand  or  patted  him  on  the  back.  He  had  a  sense 
that  they  were  all  hostile  to  him,  even  his  mother,  and 
were  crowding  in  upon  him  to  make  sure  that  he  did  not 
escape. 

And  Catherine?  What  had  it  all  been  to  her?  She 
appeared  presently  in  a  grey  travelling  costume.  (The 
honeymoon  was  to  be  spent  in  London.)  She  kissed 
her  mother  and  clung  to  her,  shed  tears  upon  her  re- 
doubtable bosom,  kissed  and  clung  to  Belle,  and  pecked 
timidly  at  Margaret's  cheek.  Her  stepfather  kissed  her 
full  on  the  lips  and  she  shrank  from  him. — "I'm  ready, 
Jamie,"  said  she,  and  he  walked  after  her  saying:  "O 
my  beautiful,  I  do  thank  God  to  escape."  He  took  off 
his  hat  and  lifted  his  face  to  the  sky  to  feel  the  wind 
in  his  hair  and  the  light  upon  his  eyes.  In  the  carriage 
he  asked  her:  "Aren't  you  glad  to  escape?"  and  she 
replied:  "I'm  glad  it's  over.  I  was  getting  sick  of  all 
the  excitement." — Said  he:  "I  was  beginning  to  think 
you  might  forget  me  altogether." — "Forget  you,  Jamie? 
How  could  I?"  He  felt  a  swift  elation,  a  return  of  the 


CATHERINE  455 


enchantment  that  had  come  upon  him  when  he  first  saw 
her.  On  the  threshold  of  her  young  life,  his  own,  fan- 
tastic, absurd,  confused  and  twisted,  fell  away  from  him. 
The  glamour  of  her  youth  touched  him  and  he  was 
young  again  but  without  the  torment  of  shyness  and 
conceit  that  had  so  blurred  his  own  boyhood.  All  things 
seemed  possible  then.  He  and  she  would  live  in  the  fair 
house  of  their  love  and  they  would  fill  it  ingeniously  with 
beauty  so  that  no  darkness  could  ever  enter  into  it.  This 
love  of  his  was  an  active  state,  not  a  mere  pleasant  con- 
dition into  which  he  sank.  He  was  extremely  wary  of 
everything  that  was  hostile  to  its  activity  and  it  was 
not  long  before  he  discovered  hostility  in  his  wife.  She 
was  charming  and  had  a  great  capacity  for  enjoyment. 
Good  company  she  was  and  easily  pleased,  but  she  yielded 
too  readily  to  his  emotions,  and  absorbed  them,  without 
being  roused  to  activity.  So  it  was  with  his  thoughts. 
She  received  them  too  but  never  brought  her  own  per- 
sonality to  bear  on  them  so  that  he  would  find  them  in 
her  mind,  or  she  would  give  them  forth  again,  un- 
amended.  It  was  like  living  in  front  of  a  mirror  and 
it  was  abominable  to  him.  He  reminded  himself  that 
she  was  only  a  girl  and  told  himself  that  he  must  be 
patient,  but  he  was  disappointed.  He  had  expected  mar- 
riage to  have  a  transfiguring  effect  upon  her,  as  indeed 
it  had  had  so  far  as  sensations  went.  Her  capacity  for 
mere  physical  companionship  was  enormously  increased ; 
she  could  taste  almost  to  the  full  the  satisfaction  of 
having  another  human  being  near  her.  He  could  per- 
ceive a  visible  difference  in  her  when  he  returned  after 
a  short  absence.  This  new  capacity  in  her  augmented 
his  and  the  act  of  living  became  a  less  airy  and  fantastic 
thing  so  that  he  lived  less  in  his  imagination  and  dis- 
covered innumerable  small  pleasures  of  sight  and  touch 


456  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

and  taste  that  had  hitherto  been  hidden  from  him.  These 
all  made  the  honeymoon  more  and  more  delightful  but 
less  and  less  as  the  time  approached  did  he  relish  re- 
turning to  the  task  of  building  up  the  household  in 
Thrigsby.  That,  he  knew,  was  not  a  thing  that  would 
happen  automatically,  and  when  he  contemplated  the  ma- 
terial with  which  he  had  to  deal  he  was  ruefully  dis- 
appointed. Love  had  brought  delight,  ecstasy,  but  no 
miracle,  and  he  had  counted  on  the  miracle.  Out  of 
love  should  have  grown  a  new  world  in  which  he  and 
his  wife  should  dwell  in  simple  amity  and  understand- 
ing even  as  the  first  man  and  woman  of  the  Bible. 
Without  that,  love  was  vain,  a  little  comfort  in  a  world 
already  too  comfortable.  He  had  entered  into  it  honestly 
and  frankly  not  caring  in  the  least  what  was  destroyed 
in  him  so  the  miracle  came  about.  It  had  not  come  about 
and  without  ceaseless  striving  there  would  be  another 
dull,  respectable  plodding  household  added  to  the  thou- 
sands of  them  in  Thrigsby.  Very  well  then,  he  was 
ready  for  that  effort.  Did  striving  mean  strife?  So 
be  it.  Yet  he  trembled  when  he  thought  of  Catherine, 
so  young,  so  innocent  and  unsuspecting  of  the  gusts  of 
fury  that  assailed  him. 

But  she  was  not  so  innocent.  She  was  slow  and  sly. 
She  liked  her  husband,  she  liked  his  kindness,  and  the 
unfailing  consideration  with  which  he  treated  her  was 
the  most  comfortable  sofa  she  had  discovered,  and  she 
liked  sofas.  It  was  delicious  to  her  to  lie  on  her  sofa 
and  to  have  her  handsome  romantic  man  hovering  over 
her.  She  would  draw  him  closer  and  closer  to  her  and 
lose  herself  in  the  overpowering  comfort  of  his  presence. 
All  her  romantic  dreams  of  love  seemed  to  be  fulfilled. 
She  had  hardly  a  wish  but  it  was  gratified  almost  before 
she  became  aware  of  it.  From  the  beginning  to  the 


CATHERINE  457 


end  of  the  day  she  hardly  needed  to  raise  a  finger  for 
herself,  and  at  night  she  had  but  to  accept  a  love  which 
penetrated  to  every  corner  of  her  being  and  filled  it 
with  sweetness.  It  was  the  realisation  of  all  her  dreams 
and  she  was  content  and  asked  no  more.  Her  husband 
quite  perfectly  performed  his  functions  of  ministering 
to  that  realisation  and  she  could  not  imagine  his  having 
any  desire  outside  or  beyond  it.  Sometimes  he  would 
talk  to  her,  as  she  called  it,  solemnly.  Then  she  would 
listen  but  only  to  his  voice,  catching  all  the  tenderness 
in  it  and  drinking  it  in  to  add  to  the  store  of  sweetness. 
She  hoarded  love  as  the  camel  hoards  sustenance  in 
his  hump,  and  when  Jamie  had  one  of  what  she  called 
"his  moods"  and  was  remote  from  her,  then  she  drew 
on  her  hoard  and  lived  on  it  until  he  came  back  to  her. 
What  seemed  to  her  a  return  to  the  duty  of  ministra- 
tion was  to  him  a  return  to  the  assault.  He  would  try 
to  get  her  to  talk  of  herself,  but  she  remembered  very 
little.  She  seemed  always  to  have  been  petted  and  spoiled 
and  her  only  positive  impression  was  one  of  dislike  for 
her  mother. — "You  understand,"  he  would  say,  "that 
we  are  going  back  to  build  up  our  home,  with  children, 
friends." — "Mother  was  quite  different  after  she  mar- 
ried the  Doctor,"  said  Catherine.  "She  stopped  fussing 
and  scolding.  And  of  course  he  adores  her,  but  we 
didn't  seem  to  belong  to  her  any  more.  Say  you  adore 
me,  Jamie." — "Yes,  yes,  I  adore  you,  Kate,  but  there  is 
something  else  beyond  all  that." — "I  don't  want  any- 
thing else." — "But  you  have  to  live  through  it  whether 
you  want  it  or  not." — "I  leave  everything  to  you,  Jamie. 
You  are  so  wonderful  and  I  am  so  happy." — "I  can 
do  nothing  without  you,  Kate." — "You  have  me,  every 
inch  of  me." — Really,  she  thought,  he  was  sometimes 
very  tiresome.  What  more  did  he  want  ?  She  was  very 


458  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

happy,  far  more  happy  than  she  had  ever  expected  to 
be.  It  was  folly  to  think  of  the  future  when  the  present 
was  so  entirely  satisfying.  She  supposed  him  to  be  talk- 
ing of  the  future  and  when  she  got  tired  of  it  would 
try  to  drag  him  back  into  the  exquisite  anguish  of  present 
delights,  but  always  what  to  her  was  a  sinking  into  the 
void  was  to  him  a  leap  into  the  keenest  and  most  living 
joy.  She  contained  her  pleasure,  while  his  joy  burst 
from  him  and  was  free  everywhere  but  through  her. 
She  felt  dimly  that  he  accepted  her  and  she  was  faintly 
conscious  of  the  danger  she  was  in  and  ceased  her  activity 
and  became  once  more,  and  with  great  relief,  passive. 
It  was  pleasanter  so.  There  were  none  of  the  emotional 
storms  which  had  frightened  her  in  him. 

The  crisis  came  one  night  when  he  broke  into  an 
agony  of  tears,  and  she  lay  for  a  long  time  in  silence 
hating  and  despising  him.  At  last  she  could  endure  it 
no  longer  and  she  comforted  him  blindly  and  stupidly 
as  she  would  have  done  a  child.  His  sobs  tore  at  her 
heart  and  she  wanted  to  stop  that.  She  soothed  him 
like  a  mother  with  a  little  foolish  passionate  boy: — 
"Don't  cry,  Jamie  darling.  I  can't  bear  it.  What  are 
you  crying  for?  Aren't  you  happy?  I  can't  bear  it  if 
you  aren't  happy." — He  was  so  glad  of  the  comfort, 
so  reassured  to  have  her  recognise  even  the  boy  in  him 
that  he  took  hope  and  turned  to  her  and  told  her  that 
he  was  a  fool.  Perhaps  he  had  come  too  late  to  mar- 
riage, perhaps  it  would  have  been  easier  had  he  been  as 
young  as  she — (in  his  heart  he  knew  that  it  would  not 
have  been) — and  perhaps  she  would  understand  later  on. 

From  that  moment  he  fixed  his  hopes  on  the  time 
when  the  child  should  come.  Then,  he  thought,  she 
would  be  awakened.  Then  she  would  be  alive  to  the 
lovely  changing  world  in  which  he  had  his  being  and 


CATHERINE 


459 


there  would  be  an  end  of  the  rigid  conceptions  in  which 
she  was  bound.  His  tenderness  for  her  redoubled  and 
all  his  thoughts  were  centred  upon  her.  That  made  her 
happy,  convinced  her  that  her  marriage  was  a  success 
and  that  she  was  provided  for  in  complete  security.  She 
had  the  pleasure  of  feeling  superior  to  her  mother,  whose 
marriage  was  one  of  violence — quarrels  and  reconcilia- 
tions— and  to  her  sister  who  had  become  more  precisely 
the  enraged  spinster.  Quarrels  in  her  own  life  there 
were  none.  All  that  happened  in  this  kind  was  that  her 
husband  sank  into  a  profound  gloom  from  which  he 
would  emerge  in  a  desperate  and  furious  ecstasy.  Life 
with  him  was  more  than  happy :  it  was  exciting,  though 
she  felt  a  little  ashamed  of  him  for  being  so  singular. 
In  her  rare  moments  of  articulate  dislike  for  him  she 
called  him  unmanly,  though  she  would  have  been  hard 
put  to  it  to  point  to  any  action  of  his  in  support  of  the 
epithet. 

For  Margaret  she  conceived  a  great  liking,  for  Tom 
a  full  admiration  tempered  with  jealousy  when  she  dis- 
covered that  he  was  the  leading  member  of  the  family 
into  which  she  had  passed.  Very  easily  she  adopted  the 
Lawrie  shibboleths  and  looked  down  on  her  mother  as 
of  an  inferior  class :  a  doctor  being  a  mere  parasite  on 
the  Thrigsby  which  the  Lawries  had  made,  for  the  legend 
had  now  descended  to  and  included  them.  John's  suc- 
cess had  conquered  the  last  resistance  of  the  Greigs 
and  the  Lawries  were  established  in  the  hierarchy. 
Catherine  had  married  much  better  than  she  had  ex- 
pected and  she  was  rather  overwhelmed  at  her  luck. 
All  her  relations-in-law  were  pleased  with  her  because 
she  had  succeeded  in  pinning  down  the  one  doubtful 
member  of  the  family.  Jamie  had  settled  down  and 
Cateaton's  Bank  would  be  included  in  their  territory. 


460  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

His  indiscretions  would  be  forgotten  and  he  and  his 
brothers  could  be  left  to  represent  the  interests  of  the 
clan  in  Thrigsby,  while  the  senior  branches  propagated 
the  gospel  of  hard-headedness  and  the  divine  right  of 
commerce  elsewhere.  Catherine  took  to  it  like  a  new- 
born swan  to  water.  She  had  never  been  buoyed  up  by 
a  philosophy  before.  Her  own  father  had  been  an 
Anglican  clergyman  living  in  perpetual  self-abasement, 
while  her  stepfather's  whole  enthusiasm  was  in  his 
medical  work  with  no  other  reality  in  the  world  than  the 
human  body,  its  mechanism,  sensations,  diseases,  singu- 
larities, tricks,  oddities,  pranks  and  comic  functions.  He 
saw  good  and  evil  only  in  terms  of  physical  health  or 
illness,  and  he  had  denied  Catherine  all  belief  except 
in  her  beauty  of  which  he  had  been  almost  jealously 
appreciative.  She  had  had  no  self-reliance  until  she 
found  this  service  in  her  family  by  marriage,  who  valued 
her  beauty  as  an  asset.  They  called  her  "the  lovely  Mrs. 
James"  and  made  her  feel  her  consequence.  All  this 
pleased  Jamie  in  his  simplicity.  His  relatives  had  never 
been  so  amiable  to  him.  He  was  proud  of  his  wife  and 
glad  of  the  happiness  she  had.  She  was  not  so  exacting 
with  him  and  they  had  a  long  period  of  romantic  easy 
pleasure  in  each  other,  genial  and  expansive  so  that  he 
hoped  steadily  for  the  love  and  intimacy  that  he  craved. 
She  was  so  young  yet.  She  would  learn  that  because 
she  wanted  a  thing  that  was  no  reason  why  she  should 
have  it  immediately  without  any  reference  to  the  wishes 
of  others.  But  he  gave  her  everything  she  wanted. 
When  the  child  came,  he  thought,  she  would  discover 
that  she  must  yield  to  the  necessities  of  another  life  and 
how  they  were  identical  with  her  own. 

Yet  when  the  child  came  there  was  a  terrible  repetition 
of  the  comedy  of  his  marriage,  and  he  was  made  a  farce- 


CATHERINE  461 


fool.  Margaret  and  Agnes  now  joined  with  Sophia, 
Belle  and  Mrs.  Broadbent.  One  or  other  of  them,  often 
more  than  one,  was  in  his  house  continually.  When  he 
tried  to  protest  he  was  told  that  Catherine  was  so  young 
and  must  be  looked  after,  and  any  attempt  on  his  part 
to  discuss  her  condition  was  treated  as  an  indecency. 
He  raged  against  them  to  Catherine,  but  she  said  they 
were  very  kind  and  she  felt  lonely  while  he  was  away. — 
"Then  let  them  go  when  I  come  home." — "Jamie,  your 
own  mother !" — "When  it  comes  to  a  great  mystery  like 
this  she  is  as  much  a  stranger  as  any  other." — "How  can 
you  say  such  a  thing?  It  isn't  a  mystery.  I'm  not  the 
first  woman  in  the  world  to  have  a  baby.  Besides  it 
doesn't  belong  to  us  alone.  It  belongs  to  the  family." — 
"Ah !  You  have  all  their  arguments.  I  want  your  own. 
I  want  your  own  feeling." — "Oh!  Jamie,  do  be  reason- 
able. Do  see  that  it  is  a  very  difficult  time  for  me  and 
that  I  want  help." — "Then  let  me  give  it  you." — "How 
can  you?  You're  a  man." — He  threw  up  his  hands  in 
despair.  The  family!  The  family!  It  took  everything 
and  gave  nothing.  It  insisted  upon  marriage,  and  denied 
marriage,  denied  its  sanctity,  its  privacy,  its  intimacy. 
He  implored  Catherine  to  listen  to  him  but  she  parried 
all  his  arguments  with  sentiment,  his  mother,  her  mother. 
At  last  he  forced  on  her  the  logic  of  her  sentiment  and 
got  her  to  consent  to  limit  the  feminine  invasion  to  his 
mother  and  hers.  Sophia,  Belle  and  Agnes  were  warned 
off.  Between  Margaret  and  Mrs.  Broadbent  there  were 
fierce  battles  over  the  pregnant  body  of  Catherine.  Mrs. 
Broadbent  was  for  sound  medical  wisdom,  Margaret  for 
religious  comfort,  in  what  they  both  agreed  to  be  an 
affliction.  Catherine  very  soon  wearied  of  them  and 
was  reduced  to  tears,  and  she  vented  her  unhappiness  on 
her  husband.  She  revenged  herself  by  treating  him  as 


462  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

a  mere  man  who  could  understand  nothing  of  what  was 
going  on.  To  keep  him  frantic  she  indulged  her  caprices : 
now  she  must  have  this  to  eat,  now  that  to  wear:  or 
she  desired  to  see  a  particular  corner  of  a  particular  field 
some  ten  miles  away:  or  she  took  a  dislike  to  a  certain 
piece  of  furniture  and  wanted  something  else  in  its  stead. 
She  made  him  buy  three  different  new  beds  for  her  con- 
finement and  would  have  the  bedroom  repapered  within 
a  month  of  the  event.  He  was  kept  busy  altering  and 
adjusting  her  outward  world  to  meet  her  new  condition. 
To  her  inward  world  she  never  once  admitted  him. 
And  over  every  outward  change  Mrs.  Broadbent  and 
Margaret  quarrelled  until  at  last  Catherine,  though  she 
enjoyed  it,  could  bear  it  no  longer.  Jamie  interfered, 
and  drove  them  out.  They  insisted  that  Catherine  must 
have  a  woman  near  her  until  the  nurse  came  and  he  said 
he  would  have  Tibby  or  none.  Tibby!  What  could 
she  know  about  it  ?  She  was  unmarried  and,  breathe  the 
word,  illegitimate. — "It  shall  be  Tibby  or  none,"  said 
Jamie.  "At  least  she  will  not  quarrel  and  carp  at  every- 
thing I  do.  At  least  she  will  respect  us  as  husband  and 
wife  and  have  a  little  human  pity  for  the  two  of  us." 

So  Tibby  came  and,  with  her,  peace.  Catherine  was 
cowed  by  her  and  grateful  for  her  instinctive  sympathy. 
She  was  allowed  at  last  to  become  absorbed  in  her  condi- 
tion and  to  gaze  in  upon  herself  in  a  musing  drowsiness 
that  presently  included  her  husband  so  that  she  would 
sit  for  hours  in  silence  with  her  hand  in  his,  expectant, 
but  too  self-absorbed  even  for  humility.  Jamie  was 
sensible  then  of  his  isolation  with  her,  of  the  profound 
emptiness  save  for  the  corporeal  mystery  of  their  life 
together,  and  of  the  loving  protection  that  Tibby' s  pres- 
ence afforded  them.  For  the  other  women  were  afraid 
of  Tibby  and  suffered  her  to  dictate  their  visits. 


CATHERINE  463 


When  the  nurse  came,  Tibby  remained.  There  was 
an  outcry  and  a  concerted  effort  was  made  to  remove 
her.  But  she  remained.  John  came  to  his  brother  to 
protest. — "Tibby's  place,"  he  said,  "is  with  mother,  to 
whom  she  is  bound  in  gratitude." — "Mother  has  had 
twenty  years'  service  from  her,"  said  Jamie. — "Twice 
twenty  could  not  repay  the  debt  she  owes  her  and  us." — 
"I  don't  think  Tibby's  life  has  been  so  grand  an  affair 
as  all  that,  and  mother  really  does  not  need  more  than 
one  servant.  She  should  move  to  a  smaller  house." — 
"But  we  are  all  agreed  that  Tibby  should  stay  with 
mother." — "I  am  not  agreed.  Neither  is  Tibby." — 
"Have  you  been  putting  your  heads  together?" — "Not 
a  word  has  either  of  us  said." — "How  does  Catherine 
like  it?"— "She  clings  to  Tibby."— "H'm!  Sophia 
wouldn't  stand  it,  if  I  did  a  thing  like  that." — "Look 
here,  John.  Tibby  is  a  remarkable  woman.  She  has 
made  a  world  of  difference  to  us.  She  is  happy  here. 
I  think  she  is  entitled  to  a  change.  Mother's  life  is 
finished.  Her  house  is  no  place  for  an  active  woman. 
And  further,  Tibby  is  a  free  agent.  A  kindness  done 
twenty  years  ago  does  not  make  her  a  slave.  She  has 
repaid  that  kindness  with  a  thousand  kindnesses  to  us 
all.  She  wishes  to  stay  here  and  we  should  respect  her 
wishes." — "It's  a  damned  queer  business,"  said  John, 
"and  I  wash  my  hands  of  it.  I  simply  don't  understand 
Catherine." — "Understanding  Catherine  is  my  business," 
retorted  Jamie,  "yours  is  understanding  Sophia."  On 
that  John  looked  blank  and  went  away  to  report  his 
failure  to  Tom  and  Agnes  who  were  much  concerned 
with  this  new  evidence  of  Jamie's  oddity. — "It  is  per- 
fectly clear,"  said  Tom,  "that  Tibby  is  in  love  with  him 
and  always  has  been,  and  the  only  hope  is  that  he  is 
the  kind  of  fool  who  would  never  see  it.  For  he  is 


464  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

certainly  a  fool  and  we  have  not  done  with  him  yet." — 
"I  don't  think  he  is  a  fool,"  said  Agnes,  and  Tom 
snorted: — "He  is  a  fool.  I  say  he  is  a  fool,  and  he  is 
entirely  without  regard  for  his  family.  And  a  man  who 
does  not  regard  his  family  will  not  regard  his  Queen, 
his  country  or  his  God.  If  he  were  not  a  fool  he  would 
be  dangerous.  He  is  not  dangerous,  therefore  he  is  a 
fool." — "What  sticks  in  my  gizzard,"  said  John,  "is 
Tibby's  extraordinary  ingratitude.  Mother  says  she  will 
never  have  her  in  her  house  again.  The  fact  of  the  mat- 
ter is  that  Tibby  has  lost  her  head.  The  fact  of  his 
marrying  has  distracted  her  and  that  of  course  is  the 
one  reason  why  she  ought  not  to  be  in  his  house.  I 
think  Catherine  ought  to  be  told." — "I  don't  think,"  said 
Agnes,  "that  I  should  like  to  be  told  anything  about  Tom 
that  I  couldn't  find  out  for  myself." — "There  is  nothing 
that  you  could  be  told,"  Tom  rapped  out  and  Agnes 
smiled  to  herself.  She  was  amused  by  this  little  pother 
and  in  her  heart  admired  Tibby  for  what  she  had  done. 
It  was  so  remote  from  what  she  herself  could  do.— 
"Jamie  may  be  a  fool,"  she  said,  "and  Catherine  cer- 
tainly is,  but  Tibby  is  a  wise  woman.  As  for  scandal 
there  will  never  be  any  outside  the  family,  for  it  is  per- 
fectly natural  that  she  should  go  from  your  mother  to 
her  eldest  son  when  he  has  need  of  someone  in  his  house 
whom  he  can  trust  absolutely." 

On  the  night  of  Catherine's  confinement  Jamie  spent 
hours  pacing  up  and  down  the  dining-room,  racked  and 
torn  with  fear  and  doubt  and  disappointment.  He  was 
feeling  acutely  the  humiliation  of  the  male  in  his  utter 
helplessness.  He  had  been  to  fetch  the  doctor,  who  was 
out  but  would  come  as  soon  as  possible.  There  was 
nothing  to  do  but  to  wait.  Jamie  could  not  read.  His 
eyes  wandered  about  the  room  without  resting  upon 


CATHERINE  465 


anything.  His  helplessness  seemed  to  him  a  mockery 
of  all  pretensions.  This  mystery  alone,  and  the  greater 
mystery  of  which  it  was  the  centre,  seemed  important. 
All  tended  to  the  one  end,  but  it  was  hidden  away  and 
ignored.  Almost  every  idea  that  he  had  ever  encoun- 
tered led  away  from  the  mystery.  Religion,  art,  habit, 
the  traffic  of  every  day,  coaxed  and  seduced  life  away 
from  it.  Vanity  erected  vast  fabrics  from  which  the 
mystery  was  excluded.  Even  the  idea  of  the  family 
admitted  the  mystery  only  as  an  incident. — Oh!  but 
thought  was  not  what  he  wanted  now.  Thought  also 
was  a  mockery.  Presently  one  image  only  was  with 
him.  The  child;  he  would  hold  the  child  in  his  arms. 
That  would  be  pure  contact  with  living  flesh.  That 
would  release  the  mystery,  give  it  expression  and  set 
it  moving  in  this  fog-ridden  life.  That  would  be  satis- 
faction, beyond  all  pleasure,  a  song  of  praise  beyond 
all  words,  with  none  to  steal  the  praise  and  kill  the  song. 
Then  it  was  bitter,  bitter  to  be  reduced  to  so  small  a 
thing,  that  the  body  of  a  little  almost  insentient  child 
should  give  a  truth  desired  in  all  other  contact  with 
humanity.  The  mere  idea  of  it  began  to  make  his  posi- 
tion bearable,  to  kindle  the  truth  in  himself  and  to 
restore  his  faith.  Then  came  dread  that  it  might  be 
snatched  from  him.  Every  possibility  ran  through  his 
mind.  He  might  in  a  few  moments  be  deprived  of  every- 
thing, of  the  baffled  and  yet  precious  love  he  had  for  his 
wife,  of  all  his  hopes.  He  broke  into  a  sweat  and  was 
half-way  up  the  stairs  to  see  that  all  was  well  with 
Catherine  when  the  Doctor  arrived  and  he  had  to  slink 
back,  composing  himself  as  best  he  could,  and  assuming 
a  manly  attitude.  The  Doctor  was  a  little  perky  man 
with  a  thin,  crooked,  warty  face.  He  was  very  pleasant 
and  brisk.  The  nurse  came  down  to  greet  him  and  he 


466  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

said  he  would  wait.  Jamie  offered  him  whisky  but  he 
refused  saying  that  he  made  it  a  point  never  to  take 
stimulants  while  working. — "Can't  be  done,"  he  said,  "if 
you  respect  your  work.  Ha!  Ha!" — "Ha!  Ha!"  laughed 
Jamie  wondering  what  the  joke  was,  but  the  Doctor  was 
only  being  cheerful. — "I  often  think,"  said  the  Doctor, 
"that  a  whole  book  might  be  written  about  a  time  like 
this.  Mysterious,  you  know.  In  the  dead  of  night, 
you  know.  An  upheaval  in  the  family,  you  know.  I'm 
a  bachelor  myself,  perhaps  that's  why  I  think  about  it. 
It's  a  pet  idea  of  mine  that  novelists  ought  to  consult 
medical  men  about  their  books.  They  write  them  too 
often  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  clergy.  Ha!  Ha! 
And  of  course  they  make  the  most  woeful  mistakes. 
Physical  basis  to  everything,  which  of  course  knocks 
the  bottom  out  of  the  happy  ending.  Ha!  Ha!  I  mean 
you  can't  hate  a  villain  when  you  know  that  he  is  only 
mean  because  he  has  a  stone  in  his  bladder,  or  that  a 
bungler  in  my  profession  may  have  pressed  his  thumb 
into  his  brain.  Little  physical  accidents  like  that  you 
know  may  make  all  the  difference  between  a  politician 
and  a  cut-throat." — "I  can  imagine,"  said  Jamie,  "a  cut- 
throat being  a  much  more  likeable  fellow  than  a  politi- 
cian."— "True !  True !"  tittered  the  Doctor.  "You  will 
forgive  my  saying  so,  Mr.  Lawrie,  but  you  have  the 
most  refreshing  ideas,  I  mean  in  your  writing.  You  help 
one  to  believe  that  people  are  not  such  fools  as  they 
seem.  You  have  an  eye  for  vanity,  sir.  You  see  through 
it.  You  are  interested  in  life  as  I  imagined  only  a 
bachelor  could  be.  I  am  surprised  that  you  do  not  write 
a  book." — "I  have  too  much  respect  for  the  few  books 
worth  reading,"  said  Jamie,  "to  add  to  the  multitude  of 
bad  books  which  make  them  inaccessible." — "Ah!"  said 
the  Doctor.  "I  often  feel  like  that  about  children.  Why 


CATHERINE  467 


add  to  the  difficulty  of  the  few  lives  that  are  worth  liv- 
ing?"— "Good  God,  sir,"  cried  Jamie,  "is  not  every 
child  a  new  hope?" — "Not,"  replied  the  Doctor,  "when 
you  look  at  their  parents.  That  is  how  I  should  write 
my  book.  I  should  describe  a  man  like  myself  entering 
a  house,  his  impressions  of  its  atmosphere.  I  should  set 
down  in  detail  the  history  of  the  parents,  and  the  atti- 
tude of  each  towards  the  expected  event.  But  I  think 
I  should  choose  the  second  child  rather  than  the  first, 
which  is  nearly  always  the  father's  child.  By  the  second 
child  the  woman  has  discovered  as  a  rule  that  she  cannot 
live  altogether  in  her  husband,  nor  he  in  her.  You  see, 
she  is  thrown  back  upon  herself.  The  child  has  more 
chance.  If  the  woman  is  thrown  entirely  back  upon 
herself  there  is  a  very  good  prospect  of  her  child  being 
a  genius.  Her  whole  vitality  goes  into  the  making  of 
him,  her  whole  desire  for  the  masculine  complement  of 
her  nature." — "An  interesting  theory,"  said  Jamie. — "An 
absorbing  theory,"  cried  the  Doctor.  "I  am  examining 
the  lives  of  great  men  for  evidence  of  it.  It  explains 
why  so  many  men  of  genius  have  worthless  fathers, 
though  of  course  a  man  of  iron  virtue  is  as  disappointing 
to  a  woman  as  a  drunkard  or  a  rake.  I  mean  that  if  a 
woman  is  baffled  in  her  instinct  she  must  either  destroy 
or  create.  A  weak  man  she  need  not  destroy,  but  a 
strong  man,  a  man  possessed  of  an  idea,  to  his  destruc- 
tion she  will  often  become  completely  devoted.  You  see, 
the  theory  is  pregnant.  A  book  on  it  would  occupy  a 
lifetime.  It  attaches  a  new  importance  to  birth.  Why, 
sir,  it  might  revolutionise  the  world." — "Stop,  stop, 
stop!"  said  Jamie.  "You  are  talking  too  fast  for  me. 
It  is  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  I  find  it  hard  to 
follow."- -"Why,  sir,  don't  you  see?  It  gives  a  new 
importance  to  women,  bless  'em." — "A  man  of  genius," 


468  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

said  Jamie,  "is  a  doubtful  blessing  to  his  parents,  and  I 
think  a  woman  cares  little  what  a  child  is  so  he  be 
straight." 

There  came  a  bump  on  the  floor  above  them.  Jamie 
leaped  to  his  feet. — "I  declare,"  said  the  Doctor,  "I  had 
forgotten  my  patient." — "Be  careful  of  the  boy's  brains," 
said  Jamie. — "And  if  it  is  a  girl." — "Then  be  very  care- 
ful of  her  nose."— "Ha!  Ha!"  said  the  Doctor.  "There 
is  no  fear  of  your  son  being  a  man  of  genius." — "The 
name  of  Lawrie,"  said  Jamie,  "is  so  committed  to  money 
that  it  could  never  be  that  of  a  poet.  No  one  can  ever 
sing  the  virtues  of  the  middle  class.  They  can  only  be 
set  down  by  double  entry  in  a  ledger." — "Ha!  Ha!"  said 
the  Doctor.  "There  spake  Quintus  Flumen." 

Tibby  came  in  to  summon  the  Doctor. — "Tut!  Tut!" 
he  clicked  with  his  tongue.  "Tut!  Tut!"  He  seized 
his  little  black  bag  and  ran  upstairs.  Tibby  said :  "The 
child's  born,  Jamie.  It  is  a  fine  boy  and  she  is  well."- 
"Oh !  Tibby,  Tibby.  Thank  God  for  that.  And  I  heard 
no  sound.  I  sat  here  havering." — "It's  a  fine  strong 
boy,"  said  she,  "and  as  straight  as  an  arrow.  I  can't 
go  back  now,  Jamie." — "No,"  said  he.  "I  knew  you 
would  never  go  back."  They  had  a  moment  of  the 
most  thrilling  happiness,  sharing  the  lovely  miracle  that 
had  come  to  bless  the  house. 

Soon  the  Doctor  returned :  "A  boy,  Mr.  Lawrie,"  he 
said,  "and  as  fine  and  strong  and  healthy  a  young  mother 
as  ever  I  saw.  She'd  sit  for  a  Flemish  Virgin  and 
Child.  If  I  may  say  so,  sir,  the  very  best  corrective  to 
your  nerves  that  you  could  have  found." — "Sir,"  said 
Jamie,  "my  happiness  leaves  no  room  for  theory. "- 
"Pooh!"  said  the  Doctor.  "Go  and  dandle  the  boy  in 
your  arms,  express  your  gratitude  to  your  wife  and  go 
to  bed,  for  you  need  a  sleep." 


CATHERINE  469 


Catherine  was  dazed  and  could  only  smile  wanly  at 
him  when  at  last  he  was  admitted.  But  he  took  the  boy 
in  his  arms  and  hugged  him  and  cried  within  himself : 
"O!  my  little  flame  of  life,  O  my  jewel,  my  wonder  and 
my  hope.  She  has  been  to  fetch  you  from  the  gates  of 
death  and  I  sat  havering,  spoiling  the  world  for  you 
already." 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

MR.    JOSEPH    MOON   AND   THE   SUCCESSION 


JV/TARGARET  could  not  bring  herself  to  forgive 
J-*-*-  Tibby  who  had  brought  out  into  the  open  that 
which  she  had  known  for  years  and  had  cherished  as 
one  of  those  secrets  hidden  from  all  save  God,  and  there- 
fore shared  only  with  Him.  She  had  often  prayed  to 
God  about  it  but  now  that  it  was  known  to  others  that 
Tibby  loved  Jamie,  even  though  he  was  married,  she 
washed  her  hands  of  it  as  a  worldly  and  perishable  thing 
to  be  swept  with  all  the  rest  to  damnation.  However, 
being  a  just  woman,  she  went  to  see  her  grandchild  and 
requested  Tibby  to  return.  When  Tibby  refused  she 
said  she  hoped  she  would  not  be  too  severely  punished 
for  her  ingratitude,  waited  to  see  Jamie,  told  him  she  was 
going  to  withdraw  from  Thrigsby  to  a  village  on  the 
outskirts  and  asked  him  for  the  copy  of  his  father's  ser- 
mons with  which  she  proposed  to  console  her  declining 
years. — "You  have  all  gone  out  into  the  world,"  she 
said,  "and  it  is  a  world  that  has  small  use  for  me,  a 
world  that  I  do  not  understand  very  well.  It  seems  to 
me  to  be  moving  farther  away  from  God  and  I  am  draw- 
ing nearer  to  Him." — Jamie  could  find  nothing  to  say. 
Her  speech  admitted  of  no  comment. — "You  are  all 
married,"  she  went  on,  "and  living  worthy  lives  and  I 
am  amply  repaid  for  all  the  sacrifices  I  have  made."- 

470 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      471 

"  'Now  lettest  Thou  Thy  servant  depart  in  peace/  " 
quoted  Jamie. — "No,  James,"  she  said,  "I  would  prefer 
not  to  hear  Scripture  on  your  lips." — "Very  well,  mother. 
I  should  be  sorry  knowingly  to  do  anything  to  hurt  you." 

•"You  have  hurt  me.  I  have  only  pride  in  my  sons 
and  pride  is  sinful." — "The  world  would  be  a  harmless 
place  if  there  were  no  worse  sinners  in  it  than  you." — 
"Oh!  well,"  she  said,  "I  have  done  my  work  and  now 
I  must  fold  my  hands.  But  if  I  am  to  sit  at  a  window 
I  must  have  more  to  see  through  it  than  Harporley  Road. 
So  I  have  taken  this  cottage  at  Irlam  which  has  a  win- 
dow looking  out  over  a  churchyard  to  meadows  and  a 
wood." — "A  churchyard,  mother?  That's  cold  com- 
fort."— "I  find  it  very  comforting." 

From  the  churchyard  they  passed  to  the  question  of 
Margaret's  income  to  which  Tom  and  John  had  at  last 
agreed  to  contribute  a  third  each. — "I'm  sure  I'm  doing 
right,"  said  Margaret. — "I  have  never  known  you  do 
anything  else,"  replied  Jamie.  "You  always  did  have  a 
fine  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things."  It  flashed  across 
him  that  she  was  going  to  leave  no  room  for  any  doubt 
as  to  the  correctness  of  Tibby's  coming  to  his  house. 
He  smiled  at  her  and  said:  "At  least,  mother,  if  you 
go,  you  will  run  small  risk  of  meeting  Mrs.  Broadbent." 

"That  woman  knows,"  said  Margaret  with  great  dig- 
nity, "that  I  should  never  meet  her  again.  And  I  do 
thank  Heaven  you  did  not  marry  that  Belle.  In  twenty 
years'  time  she  will  be  exactly  like  her  mother.  Catherine 
is  a  sweet  girl  and  very  religious  and  just  the  wife  I 
could  have  wished  for  you." 

So  Margaret  went  to  live  by  her  churchyard  and  her 
three  sons  took  it  in  turns  to  go  out  to  see  her  on  Sun- 
days, and  their  wives  would  visit  her  during  the  week, 
Sophia  and  Catherine  taking  their  children  with  them. 


472  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

But  Agnes  had  no  children  and  found  life  difficult,  yet 
there  was  no  one  who  could  understand  her  difficulty. 
Sophia's  only  recipe  was  "Be  cheerful,"  Catherine's 
remedy  for  all  ills  was,  "Marry  Jamie."  And  as  Agnes' 
real  trouble  was  that  she  had  married  Tom  neither  piece 
of  advice  availed  her  much.  Tom  was  kind  to  her  but 
he  could  not  conceal  the  grudge  he  bore  her.  He  alone 
of  his  family  had  made  a  really  good  position  for  him- 
self and  he  disliked  the  idea  of  leaving  it  for  his  brothers' 
children.  His  brothers  had  departed  from  the  tradi- 
tion. It  should  be  closed  to  them  for  ever.  For  Tom 
the  family  had  ceased  to  have  any  meaning.  His  belief 
was  in  the  tradition  of  commercial  expansion,  just  as 
John's  was  centred  in  spread  of  English  Liberalism,  and 
neither  cared  a  jot  for  anything  else.  Commerce  and 
Liberalism  depended  upon  the  fruitfulness  of  money  and 
both  therefore  invested  their  money  with  great  skill  and 
caution,  invested,  sold  out,  reinvested,  leaving  no  stone 
unturned  to  make  every  penny  earn  every  possible  frac- 
tion of  interest.  They  would  have  been  hurt  had  they 
been  told  that  they  were  usurers,  but  they  were  usurers. 
They  liked  to  think  that  they  were  pioneers  of  modern 
England,  and  they  were  pioneers  of  modern  England. 
Both  hated  the  aristocracy  and  both  were  very  eager  that 
the  lower  classes  should  be  kept  in  order  and  cured  of 
the  drunkenness,  lewdness,  thriftlessness,  extravagance, 
recklessness  and  love  of  pleasure  which  impaired  the 
quality  of  their  labour  and  exposed  them  to  dangerous 
ideas  and  insidious  doctrines.  Tom  was  a  Justice  of 
the  Peace  and  was  notorious  for  the  swingeing  punish- 
ments he  imposed  on  all  offenders.  They  were  different 
only  in  their  ideals.  Tom  thought  England  could  be 
made  perfect  by  imposing  severe  discipline  on  the  lower 
classes,  while  John  was  of  the  opinion  that  all  would  be 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      473 

well  if  the  aristocracy  were  removed.  Therefore  Tom 
remained  in  Thrigsby  where  he  could  have  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  the  poor  within  reach,  while  John  pres- 
ently moved  to  the  South  of  England  to  study  the  ways 
and  the  iniquities  of  the  aristocracy.  He  had  no  inten- 
tion of  looking  for  their  qualities. 

When  Tom  began  to  study  the  Poor  Law  and  ex- 
pressed his  aspiration  to  be  a  guardian  and  help  in  the 
administration  of  it  then  Agnes,  without  understanding 
a  word  of  the  Poor  Law,  instinctively  revolted.  She 
saw  that  Tom  was  becoming  harder  and  more  cruel 
and  felt  that  he  was  seeking  an  outlet  from  the  kind- 
ness which  he  forced  himself  to  give  to  her.  She  was 
afraid  of  him  and  dared  not  implore  him,  as  she  longed 
to  do,  to  pour  out  his  cruelty  upon  her.  She  tried  to 
provoke  him  to  it,  but  he  had  an  invincible  idea  that  he 
was  a  good  husband  to  her  and  nothing  could  break  in 
upon  that  idea.  He  had  her  captive.  The  idea  shut  her 
in  like  an  iron  door.  She  suffered  the  wildest  agony. 
Often  she  would  lie  upon  her  bed  and  writhe  and  weep 
for  her  barrenness.  He  would  see  that  she  was  suffer- 
ing and  be  coldly  kind  and  refuse  to  listen  to  her  when 
she  tried  to  discuss  the  matter  with  him,  because  it  must 
be  too  painful  for  her.  She  could  have  the  best  advice 
available,  but  she  must  not  talk  about  it.  His  attitude 
was:  "We  know.  Yes,  we  know.  It  is  our  tragedy. 
Let  us  forget  it."  She,  poor  wretch,  wanted  to  realise 
it,  not  to  have  it  eating  into  her  very  bones,  not  to 
have  it  crushing  all  her  life  and  every  pleasant  thing 
in  it.  At  most  he  would  recommend  her  to  turn  to  God, 
to  his  mother's  God,  in  whom  he  no  longer  believed, 
for  comfort.  Religion  was  made  for  women,  who  had 
so  many  obscure  sources  of  suffering.  That  religion, 
Agnes  knew,  was  not  made  for  her.  She  was  living 


474  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

in  a  world  for  which  it  was  inadequate.  She  was  an 
honest  creature  and  needed  to  know  her  tragedy,  to 
expose  herself  to  it,  not  to  bolster  herself  up  against  it. 
She  had  strength  and  beauty  of  character  and  she  loved 
Tom  and  wished  to  be  stronger  and  more  beautiful  for 
him,  if  only  he  would  let  her.  He  loved  her  too,  but 
could  not  see  her  point  of  view,  or,  indeed,  that  she  had 
a  point  of  view.  He  was  her  husband,  her  dictator,  he 
knew  best  how  to  make  her  life  less  hard. 

At  last  she  broke  down  and  went  to  Jamie  and 
astounded  and  shocked  him  by  pouring  out  her  tale.— 
"I  want  you  to  know,"  she  said,  "for  I  feel  so  useless, 
useless  altogether,  useless  even  to  Tom,  for  it  is  shutting 
out  everything  in  me  that  wants  to  help  him  and  to  be 
with  him." — "I  don't  think  I  understand  Tom  very 
well,"  said  Jamie.  "He  and  I  are  so  different  and  in 
so  many  ways  he  is  a  better  man  than  I  am.  I  used  to 
laugh  at  him  but  what  you  have  told  me  makes  it  very 
hard  to  laugh."  Agnes  was  between  laughing  and  cry- 
ing. "Dear  Jamie,"  she  said,  "it  is  almost  enough  to 
have  told  you.  What  is  happening  to  us  all,  or  was 
life  always  so  hard?" — "I  don't  know,"  he  said.  "It  is 
always  hard,  I  think.  But  my  mother's  life  must  have 
been  easy  compared  with  yours.  And  those  old  people, 
Andrew  and  Angus  and  Donald,  I  think  their  lives  were 
easier,  simpler  perhaps.  It  may  be  that  they  made  mis- 
takes for  which  we  have  to  pay.  But  I  like  to  think 
that  we  are  trying  for  something  greater  than  they  ever 
dreamed  of,  some  way  of  living  that  will  give  more  satis- 
faction to  more  people.  It  is  all  very  dark  now  and 
hard  to  see,  but  I  like  to  think  that.  Sometimes  I  do 
believe  it  and  then  I  find  that  I  can  bear  any  suffering. "- 
"Why  can't  Tom  see  things  like  that?" — "I  expect  Tom 
is  helping  to  do  what  I  only  dream.  That  would  make 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      475 

him  blind." — "You  won't  tell  Catherine?  I  don't  want 
Catherine  to  know." — "No." — "I  oughtn't  to  have  said 
that,  but  I  can  never  keep  anything  from  Tom  myself." 
—Jamie  smiled: — "I  imagine  you'll  keep  it  from  him 
that  you  have  told  me." — "Yes." — Agnes  too  smiled. 
She  felt  happier.  Part  of  her  burden  had  passed  over 
to  Jamie  and  he  was  content  to  bear  the  weight  of  it. 
Presently  she  said:  "You  ought  to  be  happy,  Jamie. 
It  would  be  dreadful  if  none  of  us  was  happy,  when 
we're  all  so  pleased  with  ourselves  and  convinced  that 
we  are  somehow  great  and  important." — He  assured  her 
that  he  was  happy  enough  and  was  at  any  rate  prepared 
to  meet  anything  that  life  might  have  to  offer. — "We 
have  none  of  us  been  just  to  you,"  said  Agnes,  "because 
though  we  all  feel  that  you  are  unusual  and  have  great 
qualities,  there  is  nothing  we  can  point  to  as  your 
achievement.  Perhaps  we  cannot  believe  in  anything 
but  success." — "There's  the  bank,"  replied  Jamie  with 
a  grin.  "I  should  have  thought  Tom  would  believe  in 
the  bank." — "Yes.  But  you  are  swallowed  up  in  that. 
Though  I  wasn't  thinking  so  much  of  that,  but  of  your 
being  important  because  you  are  what  you  are." — "Noth- 
ing," said  Jamie,  "is  important  in  Thrigsby  but  money 
and  there  I  am  admittedly  a  failure.  I  can't  keep  it. 
Tom  said  once  that  if  I  had  a  hundred  pounds  in  my 
hand  and  crossed  the  road,  by  the  time  I  got  to  the  other 
side  I  should  have  lost  it." — "Money,  money,  money!" 
cried  Agnes.  "Is  there  nothing  else?  Can't  people  be 
estimable  without  it?" — "Not  generally,"  he  answered. 
"To  be  publicly  esteemed  is  very  expensive." — "At  any 
rate,"  said  she,  "I  know  you  better  now  and  I  should 
be  sorry  if  you  were  any  different.  I  think  Catherine 
is  a  very  lucky  woman  to  have  you  and  her  baby  and  I 
hope  she  knows  it." — On  that  she  went  upstairs  to  see 


476  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

the  baby  and  left  Jamie  to  a  melancholy  musing,  vaguely 
dissatisfied,  oppressed  with  the  picture  of  the  narrowness 
of  the  life  to  which  Agnes  was  condemned.  It  was  the 
story  of  Andrew's  wife  over  again.  Success  measured 
by  money  produced  indifference  to  human  failure.  It 
looked  as  though  marriage  and  love  and  parenthood  had 
been  abandoned  as  factors  in  happiness,  dropped  in 
favour  of  the  security  afforded  by  money.  There  was 
not  even  the  heroic  stoicism  of  his  mother,  such  as  had 
been  adopted  to  protect  a  dear  religion.  Men  like  Tom 
simply  shut  their  eyes  to  their  failure  and  sentimentalised 
it.  He  was  glad  that  Agnes  had  come  to  him.  She  had 
shaken  him  in  his  complacency  and  confirmed  him  in  his 
recognition  of  the  impossibility  of  measuring  his  outward 
life  by  money  or  his  inward  life  by  formula.  That 
would  mean  to  accept  and  condone  squalor  in  both.  At 
the  same  time  he  could  no  longer  be  stoical.  The  old 
religion  was  broken  for  him.  It  offered  him  no  com- 
pensation that  he  could  accept  without  feeling  that  he 
had  denied  and  betrayed  his  liberty. — Ah !  That  was  the 
word.  It  had  begun  to  have  a  new,  though  as  yet  no 
very  precise,  meaning  for  him.  It  implied  tolerance. 
He  must  allow  every  man,  even  Tom,  to  be  himself,  and 
certainly  he  felt  no  rancour  over  Tom's  treatment  of 
Agnes.  That  was  a  pitiful  but  inevitable  tragedy.  Only, 
if  he  himself  were  not  in  his  own  life  to  pile  tragedy  on 
tragedy  he  must  gain  and  assert  his  own  liberty.  He  had 
thought  that  the  disapproval  of  others  could  deprive 
him  of  it  but  now  that  seemed  to  him  false.  Tom  had 
everybody's  approval,  including  his  own,  but  he  had 
destroyed  his  own  liberty.  He  was  bound  hand  and  foot 
to  his  avarice.  What  then  was  this  liberty  and  how 
could  it  be  asserted  in  terms  of  Thrigsby,  in  terms  of 
marriage  with  Catherine?  There  was  no  doubt  in  his 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      477 

mind  as  to  which  was  the  more  difficult.  Thrigsby  had 
begun  to  appear  to  him  as  a  grim  joke,  a  huge  effort  on 
the  part  of  humanity's  liking  for  the  grotesque:  slums 
for  the  poor,  villas  for  the  rich,  a  complete  denial  of 
the  human  need  of  grace,  beauty,  and  even  fresh  air,  a 
most  thorough  denial  of  all  that  previous  generations 
had  held  desirable.  So  complete  was  the  denial  that  it 
was  hardly  at  all  a  menace  to  liberty:  it  had  indeed 
given  liberty  a  new  meaning  and  driven  himself  to  look 
for  it  in  his  own  soul  and  not  as  a  gift  from  the  Almighty 
or  a  privilege  wrung  from  princes  and  governors.  It 
entailed  isolation,  but  with  it  the  power  to  break  isolation 
down.  It  made  it  intolerable  for  him  to  live  without 
more  communication  with  his  fellows  than  he  had.  He 
must  be  active  among  them  for  more  than  material  profit 
or  momentary  pleasure,  which  meant  the  establishment 
of  monotony  and  a  drifting  to  stagnation.  As  he  saw 
it  now,  Tom,  the  bank,  the  Keiths  and  the  Greigs  meant 
the  creation  of  slums  and  poverty  to  procure  a  wealth 
as  stagnant  as  poverty:  a  vicious  circle  from  which 
liberty  was  excluded.  They  were  building  a  dark  prison 
in  which  future  generations  must  live.  There  would 
soon  be  no  chink  nor  cranny  left  through  which  the  light 
could  penetrate.  And  there  could  be  no  revolt.  There 
were  sentimental  formulae  to  provide  for  every  dissatis- 
faction, and  how  could  the  poor  rebel  ?  They  could  keep 
themselves  alive  by  working  ten  hours  a  day:  they  had 
no  room  for  anything  else  but  such  pleasure  as  they 
could  snatch,  and  sleep.  As  for  liberty!  Who  talks  of 
liberty  in  England?  Are  not  all  men  free  to  say  what 
they  like,  think  what  they  like,  do  what  they  like,  to 
become  rich  in  any  way  they  like  so  long  as  they  keep 
within  the  law?  A  man  must  be  very  drunk  before  he 
is  locked  up  in  England.  Yet  this  is  not  liberty.  It  is 


478  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

rather  expediency  and  a  certain  civic  sense,  a  timid  ad- 
mission of  the  principle  of  give  and  take  which  reduces 
what  is  given  and  taken  to  the  minimum.  It  is  order 
rather  than  freedom:  once  again,  the  end  lost  in  the 
means.  The  tyranny  of  the  family  had  been  broken,  or 
•  was  then  being  broken,  but  a  new  and  greater  tyranny 
had  been  set  up.  Behind  the  tyranny  of  the  family  was 
at  least  the  authority  of  a  great  religion:  behind  this 
new  tyranny,  that  of  public  order,  was  no  authority.  It 
had  no  aim  but  expediency,  no  desire  but  for  riches,  no 
perception  of  good  and  evil,  no  activity  but  the  buying 
and  selling  of  labour.  Its  be-all  and  end-all  was  slavery 
in  the  interests  of  order.  Its  merits  were  so  obvious 
that  only  a  fool  would  think  of  criticising  it.  Abuses 
there  might  be,  but  the  system  itself  was  beyond  criticism, 
and  it  was  the  duty  of  every  Englishman  to  adapt  him- 
self to  it  no  matter  what  the  sacrifice.  It  was  the  beauty 
of  the  system  that  it  had  no  need  of  ideals.  It  was 
itself  an  ideal,  or  the  working  out  of  an  ideal:  the  or- 
ganisation of  human  life  in  a  free  country,  a  democratic 
country  which  had  for  ever  done  with  aristocracy,  a 
country  for  ever  committed  to  compromise. 

Then,  pathetically,  our  champion  of  liberty  saw  the 
compromise  of  his  own  life,  how,  revolting  from  the 
callous  money-making  of  the  firm  of  Keith,  Stevenson 
he  had  taken  refuge  in  the  bank,  how,  turning  from 
religion,  he  had  taken  shelter  in  literature,  and  how, 
discovering  a  great  love  in  Tibby,  he  had  fled  to  a  smaller 
and  more  pleasant  love  in  Catherine.  Shades  of  Byron 
and  Shelley!  What  a  poor  thing  he  seemed,  he,  who 
in  his  youthful  conceit  had  imagined  himself  to  be  in 
force  another  Napoleon.  He  roared  with  laughter  at 
himself.  Tragedy  indeed?  His  life  was  a  grim  farce. 
Compromise  at  every  turn  and  all  the  while  his  mind 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      479 

would  not  compromise.  At  least  he  had  that  freedom 
and  the  courage  to  be  a  fool.  He  decided  that  he  would 
compromise  no  more.  Though  much  harm  would  be  done 
yet  he  would  not  let  all  wither  away.  He  had  his  mental 
life  still  and  would  preserve  that  whatever  happened. 
"The  man  of  independent  mind.  ..."  Poor  drunken 
Burns!  Even  he  in  Thrigsby  would  have  had  the  song 
choked  in  his  throat. 

It  was  a  chastened  and  humble  James  that  went  to 
the  bank  on  the  day  after  Agnes'  visit.  Thrigsby's  streets 
seemed  wonderfully  unsubstantial  as  though  the  black- 
ened buildings  could  easily  be  blown  away  to  remove 
the  earth  of  their  burden.  They  were  so  ugly  and  ram- 
shackle that  they  could  not  possibly  be  anything  but 
temporary,  and  the  people  had  very  much  the  air  of 
brief  sojourners:  they  were  so  obviously  not  really  in- 
terested in  what  they  were  doing,  no  more  interested, 
thought  James,  than  himself.  He  certainly  was  not  in- 
terested in  the  maintenance  of  the  balance  between  re- 
serve and  credit,  or  in  keeping  Cateaton's  superior  to 
the  Thrigsby  and  District.  Still  less  was  he  interested 
in  the  recent  rivalry  which  had  sprung  up  between  him- 
self and  Mr.  Joseph  Moon,  lately  transferred  from  his 
very  successful  branch  to  the  head  office.  So  far  he 
had  managed  to  keep  Mr.  Joseph  Moon  subordinate  to 
himself,  but  now  rivalry  seemed  absurd.  Mr.  Joseph 
Moon  was  one  kind  of  man,  he  himself  was  another. 
Their  aims  were  not  the  same.  Mr.  Joseph  Moon  was 
intent  on  self-preservation  within  the  vicious  circle  of 
the  buying  and  selling  of  labour,  while  Jamie's  concern 
was  with  the  preservation  of  a  precious  something  called 
liberty  which  the  vicious  circle  excluded.  His  new  toler- 
ance made  him  see  Joseph  as  a  decent  little  man  bent 
on  standing  well  with  his  fellow-Thrigsbeians  and  on 


480  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

having  his  name  carved  on  one  of  the  foundation  stones 
of  a  chapel :  harmless  ambitions  enough  which  he  would 
in  all  innocence  employ  the  most  mischievous  means  to 
satisfy.  Why  not  let  him?  The  whole  of  Thrigsby 
was  nothing  but  a  means  to  such  an  end.  There  were 
thousands  of  Joseph  Moons  and  they  would  have  their 
Thrigsby  though  a  thousand  Jamies  said  them  nay. 
Jamie  therefore  relaxed  in  his  share  of  the  rivalry 
and  very  soon  saw  himself  supplanted  in  the  confidence 
of  Mr.  Rigby  Blair.  On  the  whole  he  was  glad  of  that, 
for  the  worst  slave  to  the  machinery  of  the  bank  was 
its  manager. 

Mr.  Rigby  Blair  lived  for  three  months  in  the  house 
above  the  bank  and  then  one  morning  he  was  found 
dead  in  his  bed.  Soon  Mr.  Joseph  Moon  reigned  in  his 
stead  and  Jamie  had  to  go  home  to  his  wife  and  tell  her 
that  he  had  not  been  appointed  manager.  This  news  was 
received  very  ill. — "Mr.  Moon  is  quite  a  young  man?" 
asked  Catherine. — "Three  years  younger  than  I,"  re- 
plied Jamie.  "He  is  a  better  financier  and  his  father 
controls  greater  interests." — "But  it  was  always  an  un- 
derstood thing  that  you  were  to  succeed  Mr.  Blair.  "- 
"By  us,  but  apparently  not  by  the  others." — "You  don't 
seem  to  mind." — "Frankly,  I  don't." — "But  you  will 
never  be  manager  now.  You  will  never  have  more  than 
a  certain  salary.  O  Jamie,  it  will  be  perfectly  hateful 
meeting  Tom,  now." — "What  does  Tom  matter  ?"- 
"He  despises  you.  You  know  he  does.  And  always 
without  a  cause  till  now." — "Do  you  prefer  Tom  to  me?" 
— "No,  Jamie  dearest,  you  know  I  don't,  but  I  hate  his 
having  good  reason  to  sneer  at  us." — "As  long  as  we  are 
living  happily  together  I  don't  see  how  his  sneering  can 
affect  us,  though  we  had  only  a  crust  of  bread. "- 
"You  may  not  feel  it,  though  I  do.  And  there's  mother, 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      481 

and  Belle  with  her  new  rich  husband  that  she's  so  proud 
of  though  he  drinks  like  a  fish." — "But  if  I  tell  you 
that  I'm  much  happier,  that  I've  been  dreading  having 
to  take  up  the  appointment." — "I  don't  believe  it.  I 
don't  believe  you're  quite  such  a  fool  as  that." — "I'm 
sorry  if  you  are  disappointed." — "Well,  what  do  you 
expect  me  to  be?  What  will  your  mother  think  of  it?" 
— "She'll  be  more  reasonable  than  you." — "She'll  be  re- 
signed to  it.  She  is  resigned  to  everything  and  I  hate 
her  for  it.  You  are  like  her.  She's  a  saint,  I  know. 
So  are  you.  But  a  saint  in  business  is  just  a  fool."- 
"You  sha'n't  suffer  as  far  as  money  goes.  I  shall  have 
more  time  for  writing." — "We  sha'n't  have  the  position 
and  I  certainly  didn't  expect  to  be  the  wife  of  a  common 
journalist." 

Catherine,  it  will  be  seen,  had  matured  and,  wearying 
of  her  husband's  elusiveness  and  unfailing  gentleness, 
had  gone  to  her  mother  for  instruction  in  the  art  of 
marriage.  From  her  she  had  learned  the  uses  of  the 
sharp  tongue,  the  curtain  lecture,  the  skilful  quarrel,  the 
curt  demand,  the  wheedling  caress,  the  kiss  reconcilia- 
tory,  the  angry  flood  of  tears,  the  ill-cooked  meal,  and 
the  perfect  joint,  the  sudden  truth,  the  subtle  equivoca- 
tion, the  locked  door  and  the  torrent  of  words,  while  at 
the  same  time  preserving,  what  her  mother  lacked,  the 
charming  soft  arrogance  of  her  beauty.  If,  for  a  mo- 
ment, we  may  regard  marriage  as  a  profession  like  any 
other,  we  must  admit  that  Catherine  was  brilliant  and 
shone  in  it.  It  was  a  profession  to  her,  the  only  one 
open  to  her.  It  was  her  object  to  be  among  wives  easily 
the  first.  She  had  been  from  the  beginning  socially 
indefatigable  and  ingratiated  herself  with  all  the  Greigs 
as  soon  as  she  discovered  that  her  husband  had  lost 
ground  with  them.  Jamie,  as  a  husband,  was  rather 


482  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

intractable  material  but  that  only  intensified  her  pleasure 
in  her  problem.  There  was  no  circle  admittedly  the 
best  in  Thrigsby  but  there  were  several  groups  who  took 
that  title  to  themselves.  Into  every  one  of  these  Cather- 
ine thrust  her  way,  dragging  Jamie  after  her,  and,  in 
spite  of  his  shy  aloofness,  she  had  won  a  considerable 
popularity.  She  counted  that  week  a  failure  in  which 
they  did  not  dine  out  twice,  and  occasionally  she  gave 
dinner-parties  in  her  own  house.  Her  position  would 
have  been  consolidated  by  Jamie's  appointment  to  the 
managership  at  Cate.aton's,  and  she  was  furious  at  his 
failure,  ashamed  of  him,  exasperated  by  his  frank  con- 
fession that  it  was  his  own  fault,  that  he  had  let  it  slip 
out  of  his  hands. — "How  could  you  let  yourself  be  bested 
by  that  common,  spotty-faced  Moon?  I  should  have 
thought  that,  even  if  you  did  not  care  about  yourself, 
you  would  have  had  some  thought  for  me  and  for  your 
name.  After  all  the  Lawries  do  stand  for  something  in 
Thrigsby." — "For  what?"  asked  Jamie. — "Well,  you  and 
Tom  aren't  exactly  unknown." — "But  if  I  had  got  the 
managership  we  should  have  gone  on  just  as  we  were 
doing." — "And  why  not?" — "Because  we  were  going  to 
wrack  and  ruin  as  fast  as  we  could :  I  mean  between  our- 
selves."— "Oh!  You've  been  thinking  again." — "I  have 
had  good  cause  to  think." — "We  shall  be  poor,  do  you 
realise  that?" — "I  have  told  you  that  you  shall  not  want 
money." — "But  your  writing  only  makes  enemies."- 
"Only  of  men  who  could  never  possibly  be  my  friends." 
— "You  are  not  thinking  of  me  at  all." — "I  am  thinking 
of  the  two  of  us."— "So  am  I."— "Then  we  think  dif- 
ferently."— "O !  you  are  maddening,  maddening."-  -"My 
dearest  child,  do,  do  believe  in  me  a  little." — "How  can 
I  believe  in  a  fool  who  wants  his  wife  and  children  to 
end  in  the  workhouse?" 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      483 

From  that  time  on  she  took  the  offensive  against  him, 
plunged  more  vigorously  than  ever  into  social  life,  and 
struggled  hard  to  redeem  his  failure.  Unfortunately  for 
both  of  them  Mr.  Joseph  Moon,  having  tasted  the  sweets 
of  triumph  over  his  rival,  wished  to  continue  the  pleasure 
of  it  indefinitely  and  never  lost  an  opportunity  of  hu- 
miliating Jamie,  taking  over  more  and  more  of  his  work 
and  reducing  him  to  the  position  of  a  subordinate. 
Joseph  was  a  new  broom  and  swept  very  clean  and  in- 
discriminately. He  made  great  changes  in  the  staff,  re- 
duced salaries,  and  dismissed  men  who  had  been  over 
twenty  and  thirty  years  in  the  service  of  the  bank. 
Against  that,  remembering  Peter  Leslie,  Jamie  protested, 
and  when  his  protest  was  ignored  he  handed  in  his 
resignation.  It  was  accepted  and  he  had  to  go  home  to 
Catherine  with  the  news  that  he  had  left  the  bank. — 
"Left  the  bank!"  she  cried.  "I  might  have  known.  I 
might  have  known  that  that  Moon  would  never  rest 
until  he  had  got  you  out  of  it.  And  now,  pray,  what 
are  you  going  to  do?" — "I  don't  know." — "You  don't 
know?  Are  we  to  starve  then?" — "Even  if  we  lived  on 
our  capital  we  shouldn't  starve  for  three  years  and  some- 
thing is  bound  to  happen  before  then.  I  shall  be  glad 
of  a  rest  after  all  these  years  of  routine." — She  was 
frantic.  Not  at  all  adventurous,  she  needed  the  idea 
of  security  to  be  active.  Without  that  idea  she  saw 
herself  being  dragged  down  and  down  into  poverty 
worse  than  that  which  she  had  known  during  her  moth- 
er's widowhood.  Certainly  in  Thrigsby  there  were 
depths  of  poverty  truly  terrifying.  It  was  the  abyss  on 
the  edge  of  which  all  lived.  Catherine  persuaded  herself 
that  her  husband  was  bent  on  pushing  her  over.  She 
flattered  herself  that  she  understood  him  and  she  thought 
him  very  weak.  He  would  allow  the  Moons  and  all  his 


484  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

enemies  to  thrust  him  down  without  a  murmur.  So  she 
bestirred  herself,  swallowed  her  pride  and  went  to  see 
Tom. 

He  grunted  when  he  received  her  news. — '"But  for 
you,  Catherine,"  he  said,  "I  would  tell  him  to  go  and 
sweep  a  crossing.  For  your  sake,  I  will  do  what  I  can." 
— Catherine  plucked  up  heart. — "Unfortunately,"  Tom 
continued,  and  Catherine's  heart  sank,  "unfortunately  I 
am  not  in  a  position  to  do  much,  as  I  have  sold  my  in- 
terest in  my  firm  and  am  going  to  retire  and  leave 
Thrigsby  to  live  near  my  wife's  family.  I  am  anxious 
about  her  health." — "Poor  Agnes,"  murmured  Catherine. 
— "I  am  ready,"  said  Tom,  "to  swallow  my  objection  to 
jobbery  and  I  could  get  him  squeezed  into  the  Thrigsby 
and  District  as  a  cashier,  or  there  might  be  a  clerkship 
vacant  in  the  municipal  offices.  My  word  would  carry 
weight  with  the  Town  Clerk." — "Thank  you  for  noth- 
ing," said  Catherine  with  a  flash  of  anger.  "I  would 
rather  see  him  sweeping  a  crossing  than  that." — Tom 
knew  perfectly  well  what  she  meant.  He  knew  as  well 
as  any  Thrigsbeian  the  lamentable  estate  to  which  clerks 
were  relegated :  the  empty  no  man's  land  between  riches 
and  poverty,  but  he  felt  that  he  had  at  last  got  his  slip- 
pery and  unaccountable  brother  pinned  down.  He  had 
foretold  this  collapse.  Jamie  had  flouted  the  tradition 
and  yet  had  more  apparent  happiness  than  himself  who 
had  followed  it  to  the  letter,  even  to  withdrawing  from 
active  money-making  as  soon  as  his  future  was  securely 
provided  for.  He  rejoiced  in  the  downfall  and  Cather- 
ine hated  him. — "I  am  sorry,"  he  said,  "that  I  am  not  in 
a  position  to  do  more,  but  if  you  are  in  difficulties  I 
am  quite  willing  to  make  myself  responsible  for  Jamie's 
contribution  to  my  mother's  income." — "I  am  sure," 
replied  Catherine,  "that  he  will  not  hear  of  anything  of 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      485 

the  kind.  Good-afternoon." — "I  am  afraid,"  said  Tom, 
"that  there  are  bad  times  ahead.  That  is  why  I  am 
anxious  to  help." 

Catherine  came  away  with  a  horror  of  the  stubborn 
hardness  of  these  Lawries.  She  had  no  great  affection 
for  her  sister,  Belle,  but  she  could  not  have  treated  her 
so  had  she  been  in  trouble.  She  knew  or  she  thought 
she  knew  that  same  stubbornness  in  Jamie.  It  was  that 
had  been  his  undoing.  They  were  a  dreadful  family, 
the  Lawries,  and  she  no  longer  counted  herself  lucky 
in  her  marriage.  It  was  wrecked.  She  could  not  think 
of  it  otherwise.  Jamie's  courage  and  cheerfulness  en- 
raged her.  When  she  told  him  of  Tom's  reception  of 
her  he  laughed  and  said  that  Tom  was  a  close  old 
moudiwarp  but  would  turn  up  trumps  if  it  ever  came 
to  a  real  pinch. 

Jamie  was  happy,  had  never  been  in  such  spirits;  no 
more  bank,  no  more  routine,  no  more  absurd  rivalry 
with  Joseph  Moon.  Joseph  had  got  what  he  wanted, 
and  he  himself,  James  Lawrie,  had  got  what  he  wanted, 
room  to  move  in,  time  to  think  in,  leisure  to  work  in. 
Catherine  on  the  other  hand  had  lost  everything  she 
prized :  money,  position,  and  the  excitement  of  many 
admiring  acquaintances.  She  found  that  the  truth  was 
quickly  known  and  she  was  left  only  with  a  few  men 
who  now  openly  demanded  some  return  for  their  ad- 
miration. The  women  who  had  flattered  her  deserted 
her.  To  keep  her  footing  at  all  she  had  to  indulge  in 
flirtation.  That,  at  first,  she  was  loath  to  do.  She 
disliked  familiarity  in  men  from  whom  she  had  always 
exacted  homage.  And  Jamie  had  been  so  good  a  lover 
that  the  slightest  betrayal  was  repugnant  to  her.  How- 
ever, when  he  accepted  his  disaster  so  cheerfully,  when 
he  seemed  even  to  rejoice  in  it,  when  he  simply  would 


486  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

not  hear  of  making  any  effort  to  regain  the  position  he 
had  lost,  then  she  regarded  herself  as  betrayed  by  him 
and  conquered  her  repugnance,  liked  the  new  excitement 
and  enjoyed  her  little  revenges  on  the  women  who  had 
flouted  her.  Jamie  protected  her  as  much  as  he  could 
and  was  kind  and  still  lovely  to  her:  but  she  had -lost 
in  grace  for  him,  he  knew  not  exactly  how,  and  he  too 
began  to  be  unhappy. 

For  a  short  while  he  wanted  very  much  to  go  to 
London  to  try  his  luck  as  a  journalist.  He  got  very 
good  introductions  and  was  confident  that  through  Henry 
Acomb  he  could  find  his  way  to  the  inner  sanctuary 
where  the  great  ones  dwelt  and  revealed  to  the  English 
nation  the  splendour  of  its  poetry  and  literature. 
Acomb's  Hamlet  had  rediscovered  Shakespeare  and 
Jamie  was  sure  he  had  a  fine  opportunity.  The  theatre 
had  become  interesting  once  more  and  London  needed 
critics.  He  made  a  plan  and  drew  up  a  scheme.  They 
would  go  to  London,  exactly  as  people  do  in  books. 
They  would  live  in  three  rooms  or  in  a  little  house  with 
only  Tibby  to  look  after  them.  They  would  find  their  way 
into  a  circle,  such  as  there  always  was  in  London,  like 
Holland  House,  and  the  Shelley  circle. — Catherine  would 
not  hear  of  it.  Thrigsby  was  good  enough  for  her. 
People  in  London  were  a  fast  worthless  lot  who  had 
to  turn  to  the  North  of  England  when  they  wanted 
anything  serious.  And  the  sooner  he  got  such  wild 
ideas  out  of  his  head  the  better.  Certainly  she  would 
not  hear  of  his  going  alone,  though,  of  course,  if  he 
chose  to  be  like  some  worthless  men  she  knew  of,  and 
desert  her,  he  could.  It  would  be  a  sin  upon  his  con- 
science to  his  dying  day  and  she  would  perish  of  misery. 
He  had  brought  shame  and  despair  enough  upon  her 
without  dragging  her  from  pillar  to  post  among  the 


MR.  JOSEPH  MOON  AND  THE  SUCCESSION      487 

riff-raff  of  London. — (She  also  had  read  stories  of  art- 
ists in  London,  though  of  a  different  kind.) — On  she 
went  with  her  talk  until  at  last  he  gave  in  and  promised 
her  that  he  would  not  go  and  would  give  up  his  rash 
ideas. — "You  see,"  she  said,  by  way  of  consoling  him, 
"writing  in  Thrigsby  and  writing  in  London  are  two 
very  different  things  and  it  would  be  a  pity  if  you  gave 
up  the  reputation  you  have  here.  For,  if  we  were  ever 
to  sink  so  low  as  that,  it  might  be  valuable."--"!  dare- 
say," he  said  miserably,  "I  daresay  we  sha'n't  sink  so 
low  as  that." 

Worse  remained,  for  in  his  elation  he  had  confided  his 
plan  to  Tibby,  who,  seeing  the  keen  happiness  it  gave 
him,  had  applauded  it.  Now  he  had  to  confess  to  her 
that  it  was  shattered.— "I  sha'n't  go  after  all,  Tibby," 
he  said. — "It  was  a  wee  bit  romantical,"  answered  she. 
— "I  suppose  it  was  foolish  and  young,"  said  he.  "A 
man  of  my  years  ought  not  to  be  so  foolish  and  young." 
— "You'll  be  a  great  man  yet,  James  Lawrie,"  said  she. 
"While  you  were  in  the  bank  you  were  but  half  a  man." 
— "There's  no  one  like  you,  Tibby,"  he  said,  "for  put- 
ting a  heart  into  me."  And  for  a  moment  they  were 
once  more  the  boy  and  girl  by  the  bridge  in  Scotland, 
bound  together  in  hope  and  understanding.  "We're 
fools,"  said  she. — "We're  the  same  sort  of  fool,  you 
and  I,"  said  he,  "and  there  seem  to  be  few  like  us." 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

BELL,  LAWRIE  &  CO. 


THE  issue  out  of  all  these  afflictions  was  another 
compromise.  Having  failed  again  to  do  what  he 
really  wished  to  do  and  knew  to  be  best  for  the  par- 
ticular kind  of  fool  he  happened  to  be,  Jamie  could  not 
withstand  the  pressure  that  was  brought  to  bear  upon 
him.  He  was  bullied  by  Margaret,  by  Tom,  by  letters 
from  John,  by  Mrs.  Broadbent,  and,  worst  cut  of  all, 
by  Doctor  Broadbent.  He  had  no  one  on  his  side.  It 
was  impossible  to  explain  to  them  that  he  wished  to 
work  out  his  own  salvation,  thoroughly  and,  if  needs 
must,  disastrously.  He  did  once  or  twice  try  to  make 
them  see  how  lamentably  ill  equipped  mentally  and 
morally  the  world  was  for  the  kind  of  life  it  was  lead- 
ing and  how  each  man  to  live  in  it  at  all  must  necessarily 
lose  his  soul,  since  there  was  no  work  done  anywhere 
that  did  not  lead  to  the  degradation  of  thousands  of 
men  and  women.  They  said  "Rubbish,  and  the  world 
is  very  well  as  it  is,  prosperous  and  Christian,  with 
missionaries  spreading  the  light  in  the  darkest  corners." 
— "How?"  they  said.  "And  who  are  you  to  decide  that 
this  and  that  is  wrong?  While  you  were  in  a  good  posi- 
tion and  earning  a  handsome  income  we  put  up  with 
the  unpleasant  things  you  were  in  the  habit  of  saying, 
for  we  supposed  it  amused  you.  But  now  that  you  have 

488 


BELL,  LAWRIE  &  CO.  489 

disgraced  yourself  and  actually  ask  us  to  take  you  se- 
riously, you  are  going  too  far.  It  is  your  business  to 
earn  a  living  for  your  wife  and  children  and  we  insist 
on  your  doing  so  in  a  respectable  and  ordinary  manner. 
You  don't  suppose  we  like  having  to  work,  and  who  are 
you  that  you  should  get  out  of  it?" — Jamie  could  not 
explain  to  them  that  what  they  called  work  was  a  kind 
of  loafing  which  he  abhorred.  The  actual  work  he  had 
ever  done  in  a  day  could  have  been  accomplished  in  a 
couple  of  hours.  He  wanted  work  that  called  for  more 
concentration  than  was  ever  required  in  any  commer- 
cial activity  he  had  known.  All  his  objections  were 
waved  aside,  and  at  last  he  promised  that  he  would  look 
out  for  some  kind  of  regular  commercial  work  that 
would  cause  some  of  the  immense  wealth  of  Thrigsby 
to  flow  into  his  pockets.  They  would  not  let  him  leave 
Thrigsby  and  if  he  stayed  he  must  act  in  the  manner 
of  the  Thrigsbeians,  work  hard,  or,  at  least,  long,  shut 
himself  up  in  his  house  and  have  as  little  to  do  with 
his  fellows  as  possible.  At  last  he  consented,  post- 
poned his  ambition  to  be  another  Coleridge  and  com- 
promised. He  took  on  for  a  time  the  work  of  a  friend 
of  his  who  was  ill  and  ordered  away  for  a  sea  voyage: 
he  was  in  charge  of  the  cotton  market  columns  of 
Thrigsby's  new  Conservative  daily  paper. 

This  work  he  enjoyed.  It  gave  him  an  opportunity 
to  study  men  and  manners.  It  meant  going  on  'Change 
and  meeting  great  men  and  strange  people  as  Turks, 
Greeks,  Armenians,  Germans,  Italians  and  Jews.  He 
saw  a  great  many  more  people  than  he  need  have  done, 
but  he  became  absorbed  in  them  and  made  opportuni- 
ties. His  romantic  soul  loved  this  patchwork  of  nation- 
alities, the  whole  world  in  villainous  little.  Thrigsby 
was  no  longer  English.  It  was  as  yet,  triumphantly, 


490  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

nothing,  an  enormous  machine  entirely  indifferent  to 
race,  colour,  thought,  feeling,  individuality,  variety. 
His  opinions  and  ideas  were  changed  insensibly.  He 
began  to  admire  Thrigsby,  to  wish  to  understand  it.  No 
longer  was  it  a  dirty  provincial  town.  It  was  that  out- 
wardly, but  in  spite  of  its  repellent  aspect  and,  on  the 
whole,  disgusting  habits,  it  had  a  powerful  and  a  free 
spirit.  Its  fame  was  world-wide.  It  was  already  some- 
thing more  than  English.  Its  work  depended  on  co- 
operation with  men  working  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  It  represented  something  new  in  the  world, 
something  that  at  first  sight  appeared  ugly,  hostile  and 
destructive.  It  swallowed  up  men  by  the  thousand, 
took  their  children  and  turned  them  almost  into  a  dif- 
ferent race  and  entombed  them  in  dirty  bricks  and  mor- 
tar, but  it  took  from  each  a  little  of  his  essence  and 
absorbed  it  into  its  growing  mighty  spirit.  James  Law- 
rie  felt  that  and  his  own  spirit  grew  big  within  him. 
He  was  aware  of  purpose  but  could  nowhere  discern  it. 
There  was  nothing  visible  but  the  ugliness,  the  hos- 
tility and  the  destructive  cruelty.  And  the  men  he  met 
were  also  ugly,  hostile,  cruel  and  destructive.  With 
the  essence  gone  out  of  them  they  were  like  insects 
busily  sucking  the  virtue  out  of  the  life  of  the  place. 
It  was  not  the  corruption  of  vice,  not  Sodom  and  Go- 
morrah, but  an  active,  splendid,  ceaseless  destructive- 
ness,  sucking  up  the  rottenness  of  English  life. — De- 
cidedly, thought  Jamie,  Thrigsby  was  the  place  to  be 
in  and  he  had  been  romantic  and  a  little  foolish  to 
dream  of  London  and  the  pretentiousness  of  letters. 
Here  was  activity  that  affected  the  whole  world,  civi- 
lised and  uncivilised,  and  it  was  better  to  be  destroyed 
by  it  than  elsewhere  to  seek  to  create  a  pleasant  life. 
There  seemed  even  good  reason  for  the  Thrigsbeians 


BELL,  LAWRIE  &  CO.  491 

setting  their  faces  against  the  amenities  of  life;  they 
were  but  a  clog  upon  it,  they  had  lost  their  meaning, 
they  made  for  falseness.  Life  must  be  reshaped  and  it 
mattered  not  how  hard  and  terrible  and  devastating  the 
process  might  be.  It  must  become  formless  and  un- 
gracious again  if  ever  it  were  to  recover  form  and 
grace.  Thrigsby  became  to  Jamie  like  some  huge  mon- 
ster of  which  he  had  become  affectionately  terrified. 
He  felt  as  St.  George  must  have  done  when  the  serpent 
fawned  upon  him  and  became  a  meek  beast  and 
debonair.  Yet  there  was  no  taming  Thrigsby  nor  had 
he  any  wish  to  try.  His  desire  was  to  live  in  its  life 
and  as  near  the  terrible  black  heart  of  it  as  he  could 
get.  Merely  to  profit  by  its  activity  was  in  his  eyes  to 
impede  it  and  to  deny  its  virtue.  It  had  a  greater  aim 
and  significance  than  the  reward  of  cunning.  Never 
was  he  so  full  of  theories:  never  had  he  had  so  excit- 
ing a  time.  He  began  to  love  Thrigsby  and  to  yield 
entirely  to  its  fascination.  Whatever  happened  he  would 
cling  to  it.  In  a  few  years,  he  thought  (being  very  ig- 
norant of  history),  results  would  appear,  the  new  shapes 
forged  for  human  consciousness:  something  entirely 
splendid  and  wonderful,  as  great  as  or  greater  even  than 
Elizabethan  England.  He  was  so  naive  as  to  imagine 
that  he  had  but  to  have  a  clearish  perception  of  an  idea 
for  it  to  become  immediately  effective  and  in  accordance 
with  his  imagination.  He  expected  the  forces  that  con- 
trolled the  destinies  of  generations  to  work  in  terms 
of  his  single  life,  and  was  so  eager  in  his  search  for 
evidence  in  favour  of  this  expectation  that  very  little 
sufficed  for  him  and  he  was  rarely  disappointed. 

He  thoroughly  enjoyed  his  work  for  the  paper  and 
was  sorry  when  his  friend  returned  and  he  had  to  give 
it  up.  Then  after  a  brief  reaction  during  which  the 


492  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

actual  heavy  squalor  of  the  town  weighed  heavily  upon 
him  and  choked  his  idealism,  he  set  about  repairing  his 
fortunes,  being  driven  thereto  by  Catherine  who  threat- 
ened to  leave  him  if  he  did  not  at  once  set  about  making 
money. 

Among  his  new  acquaintances  was  that  Bell  who  had 
had  the  desk  in  Peter  Leslie's  room  at  which  he  had 
begun  his  career.  Bell's  career  was  varied  and  he  had 
been  a  yarn  agent,  a  commercial  traveller,  a  manufac- 
turer in  a  small  way,  a  tout,  an  insurance  broker:  one 
way  or  another  he  had  touched  almost  every  side  of 
the  trade  of  Thrigsby,  sometimes  losing,  sometimes 
making  money.  When  Jamie  met  him  he  was  prosper- 
ous, having  established  connections  with  Liverpool  as  a 
broker.  He  had  just  made  a  great  bid  to  gain  a  really 
solid  prosperity  and  had  assumed  liabilities  which,  un- 
less all  went  well,  were  far  too  heavy  for  his  resources. 
This  he  did  not  tell  Jamie  whom  he  marked  down  as 
a  man  whose  money  and  connections  would  be  useful 
to  him.  A  popular  man,  he  had  been  able  to  help  Jamie 
in  a  number  of  ways,  giving  him  introductions  among 
the  countless  mysterious  middlemen  whose  services 
seemed  to  be  necessary  to  the  production  and  distri- 
bution of  cotton  goods.  Bell  was  a  born  middleman, 
shrewd,  quick,  unimaginative,  without  the  least  inter- 
est in  the  work  he  was  doing  except  for  the  profits  he 
could  get  out  of  it.  He  lived  for  the  convivial  society 
of  men  like  himself  and  was  never  so  happy  as  at  a 
smoking  concert  of  the  Bowling  Club  of  which  he  was 
a  shining  light.  So  far  as  he  could  apprehend  heaven 
at  all,  his  image  of  it  was  a  square  of  bright  smooth 
turf,  with  heavy  wooden  balls,  like  so  many  worlds 
rolling  rather  crazily  across  it.  The  fancy  was  Jamie's, 
who  when  he  was  introduced  to  the  game  by  Bell,  was 


BELL,  LAWRIE  &  CO.  493 

fascinated  by  it,  and  by  the  crazy  passion  which  the 
men  who  played  it  put  into  it.  Nothing  else  in  Thrigsby 
had  so  satisfied  his  aesthetic  sense.  Perhaps  it  was  only 
the  lovely  turf  that  pleased  him  but  he  read  far  more 
into  it  than  that  and  he  would  talk  by  the  hour  to  Bell, 
who  hardly  understood  a  word  of  what  he  was  saying, 
but  conceived  a  great  and  very  humble  admiration  for 
him.  Bowls  in  the  summer  evenings  and  on  Saturday 
afternoons  became  Jamie's  chief  solace  and  delight,  and 
when  Bell  proposed  as  an  adjunct  to  bowls  and  the  en- 
thusiasm they  shared,  that  they  should  join  together 
in  partnership  in  business,  Jamie  readily  consented.  Bell 
prepared  a  statement  showing  his  profits  and  how  they 
could  be  increased.  The  proposition  was  laid  before 
Catherine,  who  approved  it,  and  so  the  firm  of  Bell, 
Lawrie  &  Co.  was  founded  and  had  its  offices  in  Cut 
Mill. 

This  step  won  general  approval.  It  pleased  Catherine 
to  hear  Jamie  speak  of  "his  firm"  and  relieved  her  of 
her  dread  lest  he  should  drift  into  some  indefinite  way 
of  earning  his  living.  It  delighted  Margaret  to  think 
of  a  house  being  founded  with  the  name  of  Lawrie  upon 
its  doors,  and  Tom  was  of  the  opinion  that  anything 
was  better  than  the  employment  of  labour. — "You  pay 
a  man  two  pounds  a  week,"  he  used  to  say,  "but  you 
have  no  means  of  knowing  that  you  are  getting  two 
pounds'  worth  of  work  out  of  him." — And  again  he 
would  say: — "There  are  no  more  fortunes  to  be  made 
without  a  certain  element  of  speculation.  The  trade  has 
been  so  split  up.  There  is  specialisation  in  every  branch 
of  it." — Once  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  retire 
Tom  took  the  gloomiest  view  of  the  prospects  of  South 
Lancashire.  Other  countries  would  begin  to  compete. 
The  Southern  States  would  manufacture  for  themselves, 


494  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

and  he  doubted  if  Thrigsby  could  last  out  another  gen- 
eration. He  was  inclined  to  regard  the  tradition  as 
having  ended  in  himself,  and  Thrigsby  without  the  tra- 
dition could  not  last.  Out  of  the  fragments  that  were 
left  Jamie,  he  thought,  might  pick  up  a  few  basketfuls. 
Sombrely  he  gave  his  blessing  to  the  firm  of  Bell,  Law- 
rie  &  Co.,  visited  its  offices  and  looked  enviously  upon 
its  three  clerks  and  a  boy,  and  retired  with  Agnes  to 
Westmorland,  there  to  devote  his  leisure  to  the  study  of 
Adam  Smith,  Malthus  and  Ricardo,  satisfied  that,  what- 
ever happened,  he  would  die  a  rich  man,  one  who  had 
accomplished  his  whole  duty.  He  put  a  certain  amount 
of  work  in  Jamie's  way,  for  the  honour  of  the  family, 
whose  fortunes  at  last  he  believed  himself  to  have  se- 
cured. He  was  genuinely  depressed  by  the  loss  of 
prestige  suffered  by  the  great  houses,  his  own  among 
them,  and  angered  by  the  new  spirit  of  individual  suc- 
cess that  had  no  desire  for  honour  or  the  respect  due  to 
a  great  name.  Thrigsby  seemed  to  him  to  be  full  of  ad- 
ventures and  he  took  his  glory  with  him  into  retirement. 
With  this  assistance  from  Tom  and  with  a  run  of  luck 
attending  Bell's  ventures  the  new  firm  prospered,  and 
ventured  still  further.  Catherine  was  very  happy  and 
excited  and  became  an  entirely  devoted  wife.  Her  second 
and  third  children  were  born  in  an  atmosphere  almost 
idyllic.  The  arts  of  flirtation  she  had  learned  in  the  time 
of  her  first  marital  crisis  she  practised  on  her  husband 
who  responded  to  them  with  a  boyish  ardour.  Their 
marriage  seemed  perfect  and  Tibby  returned,  without 
protest,  to  Margaret.  She  made  no  excuse  except  that 
Margaret  was  failing  and  needed  more  than  the  raw 
girls  who  entered  and  left  her  service  in  the  intervals 
of  factory  work.  Catherine  was  charming  to  her  and 
said:  "You  know  there  will  always  be  room  for  you 


BELL,  LAWRIE  &  CO.  495 

here,  Tibby."— "I  know  that,"  said  Tibby,  "but  I  go 
where  I  am  needed."-  -"And  if  you  should  ever  think 
of  doing  some  other  work,  or  starting  a  little  shop,  my 
husband  will  be  only  too  glad  to  help  you,"  added 
Catherine,  thoroughly  enjoying  this  gracious  expression 
of  her  relief  at  Tibby's  departure. — "I've  no  thought  of 
such  a  thing,"  answered  Tibby,  "and  if  you  should  ever 
be  in  a  poorer  way  than  you  are  now,  I  would  come  back, 
without  wages,  if  need  be." — "I  know  you  would,"  said 
Catherine,  "but  Mr.  Lawrie  has  found  the  work  he  likes 
and  is  confident  of  making  his  fortune." 

Tibby  waited  to  see  Jamie. — "You'll  have  need  of  me 
yet,"  she  said.  "It's  not  in  you  to  be  happy  for  long."- 
"That's  true,"  said  he,  "but  I  don't  think  my  happiness 
is  of  much  importance.  I've  put  my  shoulder  to  the 
wheel  and  I'll  shove  as  hard  as  I  can." — "You'll  never  be 
the  same  as  Tom  and  John,  however  hard  you  try."- 
"No.  I  believe  in  Thrigsby  and  they  don't. "--Tibby 
gave  a  peculiar  inarticulate  grunt  and  a  click  of  her 
tongue. — "Have  it  your  own  way,"  she  said,  "but  you'll 
have  need  of  me  yet." — "What  are  you  reproaching  me 
for,  Tibby?" — "I'm  no'  reproaching  you,  Jamie.  I'm 
just  going  and  I  don't  like  going.  It  seems  like  a  slip- 
ping backwards." — "It's  your  own  wish." — "Aye.  But 
the  tale's  not  done." — "I  never  supposed  it  was." — "But 
you're  content." — "For  the  present.  Why  should  I  not 
be?" — "Oh,  well,  I'm  a  foolish  woman,  thinking  better 
of  you  than  you  deserve." — "You've  always  done  that." 
— "Humility,  James  Lawrie,"  said  she,  "is  not  becoming 
to  ye." 

So  she  went  back  to  Margaret  and  with  her  went  the 
peace  of  Jamie's  domestic  life.  Catherine  resumed  her 
old  arrogance  and  was  no  longer  a  companion.  Tibby's 
presence  had  awed  her  into  subtlety  and  meekness,  but 


496  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

when  she  found  herself  once  more  mistress  without  ef- 
fort of  her  own  house  she  assumed  her  power  and 
exercised  it  for  the  pleasure  of  doing  so.  She  felt  that 
she  had  been  tricked  into  submission,  duped  into  happi- 
ness, and  she  strove  to  abuse  her  husband.  With  her 
jealous  mind  she  went  probing  into  his  relationship  with 
Tibby  and  could  make  nothing  of  it.  All  she  knew  was 
that  he  and  Tibby  would  sometimes  talk  together  for 
hours,  while  with  herself  he  could  never  keep  up  a  con- 
versation, unless  it  were  tender,  for  more  than  twenty 
minutes.  She  hated  Tibby  but  could  never  defy  or  resist 
her  authority.  Even  with  the  children  Tibby  was  right 
and  herself  was  wrong.  Without  Tibby  she  was  rather 
helpless  with  the  children  and  had  no  instinctive  knowl- 
edge of  their  needs.  They  fretted  her  nerves  and  ex- 
hausted her  and  she  was  ashamed  of  the  resulting 
confusion.  Without  Tibby  there  were  constant  mistakes 
in  the  household  arrangements:  there  was  a  constant 
loss  in  precision  and  cleanliness.  Tradespeople  cheated 
her  and  she  was  continually  removing  her  custom  from 
one  shop  to  another.  Nothing  went  right  and  she  visited 
her  exasperation  upon  Jamie,  who  was  tumbled  out  of 
the  paradise  in  which  he  had  been  living.  The  armistice 
came  to  an  end  and  the  war  was  resumed,  the  pathetic, 
futile  and  hopeless  war  of  the  sexes. 

Catherine  sought  to  make  him  jealous  and  for  her 
constant  companion  chose  a  certain  Mrs.  Halloran,  a 
woman  with  whom  whispered  scandal  was  constantly 
busy.  Jamie  hated  scandal  and  refused  to  listen  to  it. 
Mrs.  Halloran  was  an  amusing  clever  Irishwoman,  hon- 
est after  her  fashion,  but  driven  by  the  heavy  respectabil- 
ity in  which  she  lived  into  strange  courses.  She  adored 
Catherine's  beauty  and  found  it  useful  as  a  protection 
from  the  unwelcome  attentions  which  her  notoriety  drew 


BELL,  LAWRIE  &  CO.  497 

upon  herself.  Men,  with  their  boundless  conceit,  amused 
her.  She  knew  perfectly  well  how  to  defend  herself  and 
it  was  a  new  excitement  to  her  to  defend  Catherine. 
Very  soon  Mrs.  Halloran  and  Mrs.  James  Lawrie  were 
inseparable  and  the  most  malicious  gossip  was  aimed  at 
them.  They  entered  the  social  life  which  had  a  certain 
very  High  Church  for  its  centre  and  there  they  created 
a  disturbance.  The  young  men  were  at  Catherine's 
feet,  the  married  men  at  Mrs.  Halloran's,  and  of  the 
doings  at  her  house  the  wildest  reports  were  circulated. 
Jamie  received  anonymous  letters  but  he  burned  them. 
Once  or  twice  he  protested  that  he  was  lonely  in  the 
evenings  and  Catherine  said :  "I  am  lonely  all  day  long," 
and  she  would  observe  that  as  she  did  not  object  to  any 
of  his  friends  he  had  no  right  to  object  to  hers.  She 
was  careful  never  to  be  out  late  and  none  of  her  obvious 
duties  were  neglected. 

At  last  there  came  a  dreadful  period  of  silence  be- 
tween them.  For  three  weeks  hardly  a  word  was  spoken, 
certainly  no  word  that  was  not  absolutely  necessary. 
It  was  torture  to  Jamie  to  come  home  to  it,  yet  he  could 
not  break  the  silence.  She  was  expecting  him  to  protest. 
If  he  protested  she  would  defy  him.  At  last  when  he 
could  bear  it  no  longer  he  took  the  blame  upon  himself 
and  he  apologised  and  tried  to  examine  with  her  the 
causes  of  their  estrangement.  She  said  that  men  never 
understood  women  and  expected  them  to  put  up  with  a 
dull  life  with  no  excitement  except  a  new  dress  now  and 
then  or  a  visit  to  the  Panorama,  that  he  never  considered 
her  worth  talking  to  and  therefore  could  not  blame  her 
for  going  among  those  who  thought  better  of  her.  The 
root  causes  of  their  difficulties  she  would  not  approach 
but  she  gradually  forced  him  to  patch  up  a  truce  in  which 
their  relationship  was  for  the  first  time  false.  There 


498  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

was  a  dangerous  excitement  in  it  which  angered  him 
and  filled  him  with  dread.  He  felt  degraded  and  his 
world  became  a  mockery  to  him.  What  was  the  good  of 
success  in  Cut  Mill  if  day  by  day  he  had  to  go  home  to 
that  appalling  failure?  He  envied  Bell  who  had  a  jolly 
common  little  wife  who  was  content  to  be  kept  in  a  cheap 
little  house  that  was  rather  like  a  stable,  in  which  Bell 
ate,  slept,  and  fulfilled  his  natural  necessities.  It  was 
hardly  more  to  Bell  than  the  boots  on  his  feet  or  the 
clothes  on  his  back.  A  man  had  to  have  a  home  and  he 
spent  as  little  thought  and  money  on  it  as  possible. 
Oddly  enough  the  arrangement  also  suited  Mrs.  Bell. 
She  was  fond  of  her  husband,  but  if  she  had  his  com- 
pany for  more  than  half-a-day  she  quarrelled  with  him, 
and  she  was  very  amiable  and  disliked  quarrels.  Their 
relationship  was  simple  but  entirely  hard  and  practical 
and  therefore,  to  Jamie,  odious  and  a  profanation.  Bell 
in  his  home  was  intolerable,  completely  empty  and 
vulgar,  without  even  the  geniality  which  elsewhere  and 
in  other  transactions  made  him  so  likeable.  It  became 
almost  an  obsession  with  Jamie  that  his  own  marriage 
might  descend  to  that  level,  and  it  seemed  better  to  him 
to  allow  Catherine  her  freedom.  Better  those  risks  than 
the  suppression  which  had  made  of  Mrs.  Bell  the  faded, 
foolish  little  creature  that  she  was.  It  came  as  no  sur- 
prise to  him  when  he  discovered  that  his  partner  kept 
a  second  establishment.  That  seemed  a  necessary 
corollary  of  marriage  a  la  Thrigsby.  The  town  was 
reeking  with  a  sordid  joyless  viciousness,  like  a  phos- 
phorescence over  a  swamp.  He  could  sympathise  with 
Catherine.  He  would  continue  to  allow  her  her  free- 
dom and  would  do  his  best  to  protect  her.  He  devoted 
more  time  to  her  and  went  with  her  among  her  friends. 
The  result  was  comically  disastrous  for  Mrs.  Halloran 


BELL,  LAWRIE  &  CO.  499 

pounced  on  him  and  quickly  had  him  entangled  in  a 
foolish  flirtation.  He  was  no  match  for  her,  lost  his 
head,  and  relapsed  into  the  fatuous  condition  to  which  he 
had  been  reduced  aforetime  by  Selina  Leslie.  Catherine 
triumphed  over  him  and  scorned  him  and  Mrs.  Halloran 
despising  so  easy  a  prey  flicked  him  away  and  left  him 
raw  with  chagrin. 

Jamie's  domestic  affairs  were  in  a  parlous  state  when 
worse  befell.  Bell  cleared  out  with  the  cash-box  and 
every  realisable  security,  leaving  only  an  impudent  note 
expressing  his  regret  for  his  action  which  he  explained  to 
be  necessary  before  the  storm  broke.  Jamie  imagined 
the  storm  to  be  domestic,  but  it  was  not  long  before  he 
discovered  where  it  lay.  The  Southern  States  of 
America  declared  their  intention  of  seceding  from  the 
Union  and  breaking  away  from  the  tyranny  of  the 
North.  War  was  declared  and  within  a  very  few  days 
Jamie  was  faced  with  the  fact  that  his  business  had  been 
swept  away  from  him.  At  best,  he  saw  when  he  ex- 
amined the  books,  it  had  been  a  gamble  of  Bell's,  and 
once  again  he  had  made  a  complete  fool  of  himself. 

At  first  he  could  think  of  nothing  but  Bell's  treachery. 
That  alone  seemed  black  enough  to  account  for  the  war. 
If  there  was  such  evil  as  that  in  the  world  then  there 
must  be  wars,  plagues,  pestilences,  famines.  Then  with 
the  war  was  associated  Tom's  retirement.  Tom  must 
have  known  that  it  was  coming :  nothing  else  could  have 
made  him  renounce  his  ambition  to  have  his  statue  along- 
side Andrew  Keith's  in  the  Town  Hall  Square. 

For  a  week  or  two  Jamie  was  dazed  and  hid  his  con- 
dition even  from  himself.  He  went  down  to  his  office 
as  though  nothing  had  happened  and  kept  his  clerks 
working  at  letters  concerning  imaginary  transactions. 
He  could  not  realise  the  war  as  something  actually  hap- 


500  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

pening  among  human  beings:  it  was  taking  place  for 
him  on  the  map  of  America,  a  conflict  between  political 
principles,  and  conveyed  no  idea  of  bloodshed,  or  wounds 
or  men  lying  dead  on  the  plains.  And  so  many  of  the 
men  he  met  were  in  the  same  condition,  dazed,  stupefied, 
not  seeing  how  they  were  concerned,  not  realising  the 
ruin  that  had  come  upon  them.  Little  by  little  excite- 
ment grew.  What  was  the  Government  doing?  There 
were  hotheads  who  cried  for  war  upon  the  Northern 
States,  elderly  gentlemen  consumed  with  bloodthirstiness 
who  declared  that  the  time  had  come  for  the  British 
nation  to  recover  her  colonies  and  to  crush  the  damned 
Yankees,  if  necessary  to  exterminate  them,  burn  them 
out  like  wasps.  There  were  even  men  who  came  into 
Jamie's  office,  very  white-faced  and  grim,  to  say  good- 
bye as  they  were  off  to  have  a  shot  either  at  the  Yankees 
or  at  the  slave-drivers.  And  there  went  up  from 
Thrigsby  a  droning  mighty  note  of  thangsgiving  that  the 
English  were  not  as  these  and  had  no  blood  upon  their 
hands.  But  when  the  Southern  ports  were  blockaded 
and  it  became  clear  that  no  cotton  was  forthcoming, 
then  the  cry  was  for  war.  England  must  declare  for 
the  Southern  States  and  liberty.  England  alone  could 
free  the  negroes.  England  was  the  sole  champion  of  the 
liberty  of  mankind  and  it  was  almost  an  impertinence 
of  the  Northern  States  to  pretend  to  be  acting  in  the 
name  of  liberty. 

The  clamour  died  down  as  a  paralysis  crept  over 
Thrigsby  and  the  mills  were  closed  down  one  after  an- 
other. The  attitude  of  the  Government  to  the  suffering 
States  was  forgotten.  It  became  a  matter  of  sauve  qiti 
pent. 

Jamie  implored  Catherine  to  listen  to  him,  to  help  him 
to  restore  their  marriage,  their  life  together  to  a  basis 


BELL,  LAWRIE  &  CO.  501 

of  understanding  and  sympathy  and  she  was  frightened 
into  acquiescence.  He  told  her  that  .nothing  else  mat- 
tered, and  to  him  then  nothing  else  did  matter  except 
human  comradeship:  riches,  poverty,  intellect,  art, 
amusement,  fun,  kindliness,  virtue,  vice,  good  and  evil,  all 
were  to  him  vain  without  the  central  core  of  living  sym- 
pathy. That  way  lay  liberty  and  towards  that  all  efforts 
should  be  directed  with  nothing  spared  for  any  other 
until  a  little  of  it  had  been  won  and  established.  He 
became  like  a  man  possessed  and  battered  at  the  un- 
fortunate Catherine  with  entreaties  arguments,  tears, 
sobs.  His  was  the  cry  of  a  soul  in  agony  and  it  fright- 
ened her.  He  told  her  that  love  was  a  sweet  thing  and 
a  dear  pretty  thing  but  in  itself  worthless  unless  it  led 
to  that  living  sympathy  without  which  joy  itself  was  a 
burden  and  a  cruel  hardship.  And  if  love  by  itself  was 
worthless,  what  were  pleasure  and  wealth  and  position, 
all  that  she  desired,  all  that  she  had  lost  in  his  ruin? 
But  she  was  too  frightened  to  understand  him:  she  was 
frightened  of  poverty,  of  being  dragged  down  with  her 
children.  At  last  he  understood,  her  and  saw  that  he 
must  do  what  he  could  to  comfort  her.  His  ruin  was 
not  utter.  There  need  be  no  anxiety  yet :  not  for  many 
months.  He  convinced  her  that  he  too  had  her  welfare 
at  heart,  but  her  relief  was  as  overpowering  as  her  fright 
had  been.  That  he  loved  her,  that  all  the  pleasantness 
of  life  was  not  gone,  was  all  she  needed  to  know.  His 
passionate  longing  to  break  the  sexual  arrogance  in  her 
was  frustrated.  She  would  not,  could  not  look  beyond 
love  or  regard  love  as  anything  but  an  end  in  itself. 
Love  was  her  comfort  against  the  fright  she  had  had  and 
she  insisted  on  his  being  wholly,  violently,  crazily  her 
lover.  In  the  hope  of  more  he  acquiesced  and  seemed 


502  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

to  win  more  and  during  this  period  of  concentration  on 
his  marriage  was  absolutely  indifferent  to  the  ruin  and 
famine  that  were  creeping  over  Thrigsby  and  the 
kindred  towns. 


CHAPTER  XL 

DISASTER 


FANNY  SHAW  had  not  been  forgotten.  She  and 
Tibby  had  remained  great  friends  so  that  Fanny  was 
often  at  the  house  where  she  would  linger  in  the  hope  of 
seeing  her  adored  Jamie.  She  had  accepted  the  melan- 
choly fact  that  his  marriage  must  thrust  her  into  the  back- 
ground, and  she  was  content  to  be  a  kind  of  pensioner  of 
the  family.  Catherine  would  give  her  parcels  of  old 
clothes  and  every  Christmas  Jamie  would  send  her  home 
with  a  turkey  and  a  plum-pudding  for  her  mother.  At 
first  she  made  herself  ill  with  hatred  of  Catherine,  but 
Tibby  soon  talked  and  coaxed  her  out  of  that  and  as- 
sumed responsibility  for  the  girl  who  remained  attached 
to  the  theatre,  sometimes  acting,  sometimes  helping  with 
the  wardrobe,  doing  everything  she  was  told  to  do  cheer- 
fully, being  paid  irregularly  and  living  for  the  most  part 
on  gifts  from  the  kind-hearted  women  of  the  theatre. 
Jamie's  marriage  was  really  a  tragedy  to  her.  It  ate  into 
her  spirit  and  arrested  her  development.  She  was  left 
turned  in  upon  herself,  brooding  and  moody.  Tibby 
coaxed  her  gradually  to  talk  of  Jamie  and  found  that  she 
had  an  extraordinary  understanding  of  him  and  showed 
him  often  in  lights  new  to  herself.  That  eased  Fanny's 
pain  and  relaxed  the  strain  in  her.  She  would  take 
refuge  with  Tibby  from  the  theatre  and  from  the  mean 

503 


504  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

streets  which  she  had  begun  to  hold  in  horror.  She  clung 
to  the  theatre  because  she  did  not  know  what  else  to  do, 
and  imagined  that  she  was  pleasing  Jamie  by  staying. 
He  did  not  forget  her  but  was  glad  that  Tibby  should  be 
his  substitute.  However  when  Tibby  returned  to  Mar- 
garet and  Fanny  no  longer  came  to  his  house  he  did 
forget  her  except  that  he  paid  for  her  to  have  lessons  in 
singing  and  dancing. 

She  came  to  him  one  evening  soon  after  his  desperate 
scene  with  Catherine.  She  came  from  the  outer  world 
which  just  then  seemed  entirely  remote  as  though  he  had 
had  nothing  to  do  with  it. — "Why,  Fanny,"  he  said,  "I 
had  almost  forgotten  you."-  "Yes,"  she  answered.— 
"I'm  glad  to  see  you,"  he  said.  "What  a  tall  young 
woman  you  have  grown  into." — "Yes,"  she  replied. 
"They  say  I'm  almost  too  tall  for  the  stage  and  much 
too  thin.  Though  I  don't  think  it  matters  much,  as  the 
theatre  will  be  closed  very  soon.  Father's  warehouse  is 
closed  and  mother  has  very  little  charing  and  I  want  to 
know  what  I'm  to  do  about  it." — Jamie  stared  at  her, 
hardly  taking  in  what  she  had  said.  She  went  on:— 
"They've  got  about  two  pounds  in  the  house  and  I  don't 
know  what  they'll  do  unless  I  go  on  the  streets." — Jamie 
began  to  understand,  to  feel  vaguely,  the  fury  that  she 
was  in. — "It's  the  same  everywhere,"  she  said,  "every- 
thing is  dearer  and  there's  no  money.  What  are  you 
going  to  do  about  it?  They  don't  seem  to  mind,  but  I 
can't  bear  it,  I  can't  bear  it." — She  began  to  beat  her 
fists  up  and  down  in  the  air,  and  he  took  her  roughly 
in  his  arms  and  held  her  tight  until  she  began  to  weep 
on  his  shoulder.  Then  he  let  her  cry  out  her  grief. 
When  she  was  calm  again  he  promised  that  he  would  go 
with  her.  They  went  down  to  the  kitchen  and  made  up 
a  parcel  of  food  and  with  this  under  his  arm  they  set 


DISASTER  505 


out  and  walked  through  the  strangely  silent  streets,  under 
the  deserted  mills,  and  the  empty  warehouses  down  to  the 
black  stews  where  the  Shaws  lived.  There  Jamie  was 
appalled.  The  house  was  almost  destitute  of  furniture. 
There  remained  one  bed  and  in  this  Mr.  Shaw  was  sleep- 
ing. It  was  his  habit  to  go  to  sleep  when  trouble  came. 
He  had  been  known  to  sleep,  when  out  of  work,  for  three 
months  on  end,  getting  up  once  a  week  to  eat  a  slice  of 
bread  and  an  onion.  He  was  philosophical  about  it,  say- 
ing that  in  this  way  he  was  no  drag  upon  his  wife  and 
children.  For  half-a-second  he  woke  up  when  Jamie 
came,  asked  if  he  had  brought  work,  and  went  to  sleep 
again  when  he  received  an  answer  in  the  negative.  Mrs. 
Shaw  as  usual  was  loquacious.  She  had  always  been  an 
honest  woman,  she  had,  and  with  lodgers  had  made  both 
ends  meet;  but  now  there  were  no  lodgers  and  no  work 
and,  though  God  knows  there  were  sinful  people  in  the 
world,  she  was  not  one  of  them  and  could  see  no  reason 
why  she  should  be  so  punished.  There  was  Mrs.  Kerry 
at  35  who  took  men  as  well  as  the  washing,  but  the  world 
was  not  composed  of  Mrs.  Kerrys,  but  perhaps  it  was  a 
judgment  on  her  for  letting  her  eldest  girl  go  out  above 
her  station  and  give  herself  airs.  Jamie  let  her  talk  and 
fed  the  children,  who,  poor  mites,  could  hardly  eat,  they 
were  so  hungry.  One  of  them  said  his  belly  was  growl- 
ing.— "Vile,  vile,  vile!"  said  Jamie  as  he  left.  No 
thought  had  been  given  to  these  poor  wretches.  He  him- 
self had  given  no  thought  to  them,  and  there  were  thou- 
sands of  houses  like  that,  thousands  of  families  in  such 
straits.  He  cried  within  himself :  "While  there  is  a 
child  hungry  in  the  land,  not  one  of  us  has  the  right  to 
hold  up  his  head.  Freedom!  Is  this  your  freedom, 
England?  And  you  dare  to  reproach  the  Americans 
while  there  is  hunger  in  your  land !" — He  wrote  to  both 


506  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

his  brothers,  to  Donald  Greig,  to  Hubert.  Hubert  sent 
him  a  cheque.  The  others  replied  that  no  doubt  relief 
would  be  undertaken  by  the  proper  authorities,  and  that 
the  collapse  was  only  temporary.  Work  would  be  re- 
sumed as  soon  as  arrangements  had  been  made  for  the 
importation  of  cotton  from  Egypt  and  India. — "On  the 
old  terms?"  asked  Jamie.  "On  the  terms  that  you  make 
as  much  as  possible  and  give  them  as  little  as  possible? 
Have  you  no  hearts?  Will  you  not  see  that  you  are 
responsible  both  for  the  slavery  in  America  and  the 
destitution  at  home?  You  will  have  Thrigsby  go  back 
to  the  old  order  of  things,  and  on  this  ruin  build  more 
squalor,  more  filth,  more  degradation?" — All  this  made 
Tom  very  angry  and  he  replied  from  his  comfortable 
house  in  Westmorland:  "If  you  had  studied  economics 
instead  of  poetry  you  would  have  a  better  understanding 
of  what  has  happened,  and  would  not  be  hysterical.  The 
good  sense  of  the  country  will  not  allow  the  mill-hands 
and  warehousemen  to  starve." — Jamie  answered  in  three 
words:  "They  are  starving." 

He  tried  in  vain  to  procure  some  immediate  organisa- 
tion. There  was  individual  charity  in  plenty  but  an 
appalling  waste  of  food  through  it.  The  churches  and 
chapels  did  all  they  could  but  they  were  jealous  of  each 
other.  It  was  soon  clear  that  Thrigsby  could  not  tackle 
its  own  problem.  Jamie  was  in  such  a  fury  that  he  could 
find  no  one  to  co-operate  with  him.  He  condemned 
charity.  Gifts,  he  said,  were  not  wanted,  but  a  change 
of  system,  and  as  all  the  charitable  people  were  enjoying 
their  charity  he  was  very  unpopular.  He  wrote  violent 
exhortations  to  effort,  but  when  he  wrote  what  he  really 
felt  he  could  not  get  his  writings  printed.  The  papers 
had  taken  the  line  that  everything  possible  was  being 
done. — "Has  any  rich  man,"  asked  Jamie,  "given  even 


DISASTER  507 


a  tenth  of  his  income,  or  given  up  consuming  in  one  day 
food  that  would  keep  a  working-class  family  for  a 
week?" — That  kind  of  thing  the  papers  would  not  print, 
and  one  editor,  his  friend,  took  him  aside  and  said: 
"Look  here,  my  dear  Lawrie,  you  are  doing  yourself  no 
good.  What  you  are  after  would  mean  a  change  in 
human  nature." — "I  don't  want  a  change,"  said  Jamie,  "I 
want  human  nature  to  be  given  a  chance.  Change  your 
rotten  ideas.  Talk  sense.  What  else  are  the  newspapers 
for  ?  Give  up  telling  them  what  you  think  they  think  you 
ought  to  think.  Let  decent  people  tell  them  what  they 
feel.  Nothing  else  is  any  good.  Tell  them  that  things 
in  themselves  are  of  no  value,  that  all  the  value  is  given 
to  things  by  labour,  that  the  only  object  of  labour  is  that 
we  should  give  each  other  liberty." — The  editor  shied  at 
the  word.  He  patted  Jamie  on  the  shoulder:  "I  know 
all  that,  my  dear  old  fellow,  but  you  won't  get  the  Mayor, 
Aldermen  and  Council  to  see  it.  Nobody  wants  liberty. 
What  everybody  wants  is  comfort.  You're  a  bit  of  a 
genius  and  a  thinker  and  all  that,  but  the  main  object  of 
the  average  man  is  to  avoid  thinking.  They'll  stump 
up  to  get  the  dirty  old  town  out  of  this  mess  but  they 
won't  think  about  it.  Now  you  run  along  home  and 
write  me  an  article  about  old  Donald  trying  to  think 
and  giving  it  up  because  it  makes  his  mind  ache  and  I'll 
print  it  with  pleasure." — Jamie  began  to  chuckle.  His 
friend  had  checked  his  frenzy,  but  he  was  not  to  be  free 
of  it  for  many  months  to  come.  It  would  break  in  upon 
him  and  set  him  reeling  at  the  oddest  and  most  unex- 
pected moments.  To  what  end  was  all  this  hideous  raw 
suffering? 

One  night  he  went  to  the  Shaws.  Fanny  admitted 
him.  She  looked  strange  and  he  soon  saw  that  she  was 
light-headed.  The  house  was  in  darkness  and  filled  with 


508  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

a  strange  sweetish  smell.  She  told  him  in  a  cold  matter- 
of-fact  voice  that  her  father  had  risen  from  his  bed,  gone 
out  and  come  home  drunk.  Then  he  had  cut  his  wife's 
throat,  smothered  the  two  children  who  slept  on  the 
mattress  in  his  room,  and  gone  out  and  flung  himself  into 
the  canal. — "They're  in  there,"  she  said.  "All  dead. 
All  dead.  It's  so  easy  to  be  dead.  He  was  quite  right. 
It's  better  to  be  dead.  He  must  have  been  thinking  about 
it  when  we  thought  he  was  asleep.  He  was  always  a 
quiet  one,  was  dad.  But  I  don't  want  to  die,  because  I 
love  you.  Poor  people  don't  love  anybody,  but  I  love 
you." — She  crept  to  him  and  knelt  by  him  and  fondled 
his  knee. — "It's  wicked  to  love  you.  I'm  the  only  wicked 
one  of  them  all  and  I'm  alive." — She  kissed  his  hand  and 
her  body  writhed.  He  put  his  hand  over  her  mouth  to 
stop  her  talking,  and  she  tried  to  drag  it  down  to  her 
throat,  and  to  press  his  fingers  into  her  flesh.  He 
shivered  and  was  bitter  cold.  His  throat  was  dry  and 
he  could  speak  no  word.  His  eyes  burned  but  no  tears 
would  come  into  them. — "Hush,  dear,  hush,"  he  said. 
"You  mustn't  stay  here.  You  must  come  away." — He 
half  carried,  half  dragged  her  out  of  the  house.  On  the 
threshold  they  met  one  of  the  neighbours  and  a  police- 
man ;  he  told  them  what  had  happened,  gave  his  name  and 
address  and  said  that  he  was  taking  Fanny  to  be  cared 
for. — "Quite  right,"  said  the  neighbour.  "Poor  girl, 
poor  girl." 

Fanny  was  half  unconscious  now.  The  fresh  air  had 
been  too  much  for  her.  Jamie  carried  her  to  a  mews 
he  knew  of  round  the  corner,  procured  a  fly  and  drove 
out  to  his  mother's  house.  He  had  no  thought  of  going 
to  his  own.  His  need  was  for  Tibby. 

They  put  Fanny  to  bed  and  Tibby  wrapped  her  up  in 
a  blanket  to  make  her  warm,  for  she  was  as  cold  as  ice 


DISASTER 


509 


and  shaking  horribly  and  convulsively.  When  Tibby 
returned  to  the  kitchen  she  found  Jamie  sitting  with  his 
head  in  his  hands  sobbing. — "You  mustn't  break  down 
too,  Jamie,"  she  said.  "You  mustn't  break  down  now 
when  there's  so  much  to  do." — "What  can  I  do?  What 
can  I  do?  Except  undo  the  whole  of  my  life?" — "You 
can't  take  the  sins  of  the  whole  world  on  your  shoulders," 
said  she. — "But  we  are  all  to  blame,  every  one  of  us,  for 
we  take  and  take  and  take  and  give  nothing  until  we 
are  all  separate  and  the  whole  world  comes  down  about 
our  ears,  and  because  we  are  separate  there  is  nothing 
to  be  done,  only  to  feed  hungry  bellies.  Fanny's  mother 
worked  for  a  whole  day  for  an  apronful  of  stale  crusts. 
We  are  all  separate  and  all  starving.  They'll  feed  them 
with  charity  and  then  go  on  just  the  same  as  before. 
The  suffering  of  others  is  no  suffering  to  them.  Do  you 
think  Tom  will  feel  all  this,  or  John?  Not  they!"— He 
raised  his  voice  to  a  shout  and  Margaret  who  had  just 
come  in  from  a  consultation  with  her  vicar  hurried  down 
to  see  what  the  disturbance  was  about.  Jamie  told  his 
story  and  how  and  why  he  had  brought  Fanny  to  the 
house. — "She  would  have  been  better  in  hospital." — "She 
would  not,"  cried  Jamie.  "She  is  devoted  to  Tibby  and 
the  presence  of  her  friends  will  be  far  more  to  her  than 
any  physician's  skill  could  be." — "It  is  too  ghastly,"  said 
Margaret,  "and  I  shall  not  sleep  at  night  for  thinking  of 
it." — "That's  fine!"  said  he.  "Because  you  have  rich 
sons  you  are  to  be  protected  from  all  the  suffering  in 
the  world." — Margaret  was  silent  for  a  moment.  He 
went  on: — "And  your  sleep  is  of  more  importance  than 
the  life  and  death  of  thousands.  That's  your  ambition: 
to  be  secure  and  indifferent." — "You  don't  know  what 
you  are  saying,"  she  said.  "I  haven't  seen  you  like 
this  since  you  were  a  boy." — "No,"  he  muttered. 


510  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

"You've  shut  your  eyes  and  your  heart  to  me." — Mar- 
garet turned  and  almost  ran  from  the  room. — "That's  the 
worst  you've  ever  done,"  said  Tibby. — "It's  true!  It's 
true!"  said  he,  almost  angrily. — "Words  spoken  in 
anger,"  said  Tibby  gently,  "are  never  true." 

The  anger  in  him  melted  and  he  went  up  to  his  mother, 
whom  he  found  grim  and  turned  to  stone,  sitting  gazing 
out  of  the  window.  He  spoke  to  her  very  gently  and 
she  said:  "If  I  have  done  wrong  I  have  been  punished. 
My  sin  was  pride  and  I  have  been  punished  in  the  misery 
of  my  children.  There  is  not  in  any  of  you  the  simple 
joy  that  was  in  your  father.  Is  it  all  my  fault?"-  -"We 
are  all  at  fault,"  said  Jamie.  "We  have  destroyed  and 
made  nothing  new.  We  have  denied  the  love  which  is 
God  and  have  dwelt  in  the  love  which  is  of  the  earth. 
It  has  destroyed  us." — Mother  and  son  made  moan  to- 
gether and  bitter  lamentation.  Both  were  simple  and 
primitive.  The  storm  passed  through  them  and  purged 
them  and  Jamie  was  left  with  a  clear  desire  for  action. 
He  had  no  thought  for  his  own  affairs.  They  could 
wait.  Only  the  plight  of  Thrigsby  mattered. 

The  next  day  he  took  train  for  Westmorland  and 
descended  upon  the  Greigs  and  made  them  hold  a  council. 
It  was  easy  to  frighten  them.  He  drew  terrible  pictures 
of  the  destruction  that  might  take  place  in  Thrigsby  if 
the  starvation  was  not  relieved.  He  described  and  en- 
larged on  the  riot  which  had  taken  place  outside  Clibran 
Hall  when  old  Andrew  Keith  had  played  the  tyrant. 
Those  days,  he  said,  were  over.  There  was  no  longer 
room  for  tyranny.  There  was  no  longer  any  other  neces- 
sity than  that  the  people  should  be  fed.  No  prestige 
could  hold  out  against  that.  Donald  was  thoroughly 
frightened  when  he  thought  that  his  mills  and  ware- 
houses might  be  burned  and  that  the  streets  of  shops 


DISASTER  511 


from  which  he  drew  his  rents  might  be  sacked.  Jamie 
bullied  him  into  starting  a  subscription  list  with  two 
thousand  pounds.  He  made  Tom  fork  out  five  hundred, 
and  felt  like  a  dentist  drawing  a  tooth.  Agnes  promised 
to  give  him,  secretly,  two-thirds  of  her  income  every 
quarter.  With  this  for  a  beginning  he  went  among  the 
merchants  of  Thrigsby  and  shamed  them  into  subscrib- 
ing. But  still  there  was  not  enough. 

He  went  out  to  see  Hubert  and  got  him  to  organise 
his  whole  country-side  to  send  in  corn  and  vegetables 
free.  But  still  there  was  not  enough. 

When  it  seemed  that  Thrigsby  could  do  no  more  then 
he  went  to  London  where  funds  had  been  opened.  Lon- 
don was  not  yet  awake  to  the  necessity.  The  North  of 
England  was  remote  from  the  Londoners  who  hardly 
conceived  of  the  Lancashire  mill-hands  being  men  and 
women  like  themselves.  Jamie  went  to  see  Acomb  and 
Selina  and  laid  his  case  before  them.  They  must  give  a 
performance  in  aid  of  the  suffering  people  of  the  North 
and  raise  a  subscription  from  the  audience.  Acomb 
readily  consented  and  put  on  Hamlet.  Before  the  third 
act  he  came  forward  and  made  a  speech  that  was  a 
dramatic  performance  in  itself.  He  described  Thrigsby 
quite  wonderfully,  beginning  with  his  own  first  entry 
into  the  place,  how  he  had  lodged  in  a  certain  gloomy 
street  where  the  children  were  like  little  old  men.  He 
described  his  own  early  struggles.  He  showed  how  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  men  suffered  these  abominable 
conditions  to  add  to  the  wealth  of  the  nation.  Were 
they  not  also  a  part  of  the  nation  and  in  their  hour  of 
need  was  that  wealth  to  be  withheld  from  them? — 
"Good,  good!"  muttered  Jamie,  looking  on,  and  seeing 
the  actor's  words  sink  home  into  the  audience  of  fashion- 
able people,  dandies  and  intellectuals.  He  met  several 


512  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

of  them  afterwards  in  Acomb's  dressing-room  and  in  his 
raw  condition  was  acutely  sensitive  to  their  insincerity 
which  chafed  him.  They  had  a  new  sensation  and  were 
excited  about  it.  Not  one  of  them  seemed  to  be  moved, 
not  one  of  them  was  shaken  in  his  complacency.  Yet 
they  were  interested  and  that  was  the  great  thing.  Some 
of  them  were  men  of  powerful  influence  and  they  prom- 
ised to  do  what  they  could.  Jamie  was  a  new  type  to 
them,  a  wild  man  from  the  North.  They  eyed  him  much 
as  a  few  years  before  they  had  eyed  General  Tom 
Thumb.  They  patronised  him  and  pitied  him.  He  was 
so  obviously  suffering  under  his  sincerity,  an  affliction 
by  which  they  were  determined  at  all  costs  not  to  be 
visited.  They  stripped  him  of  the  last  vestiges  of  his 
illusions  about  the  wonders  of  London  literary  life  and 
he  was  glad  to  depart  for  the  North  again. 

The  performance  was  far-reaching  in  its  consequences. 
The  uses  of  advertisement  were  yet  undiscovered  in 
those  days,  and  any  advertisement  had  tremendous  re- 
sults. Money  in  plenty  was  soon  forthcoming  and  the 
difficulties  of  Thrigsby  were  met  until  supplies  of  cotton 
were  available  and  the  mills  could  be  got  going  again. 

Not  a  word  of  thanks  did  Jamie  receive.  He  had 
made  himself  a  nuisance  and  he  had  given  vent  to  violent 
and  dangerous  opinions.  Henceforth  and  for  ever  he 
was  a  stranger  to  respectability.  He  crept  back  into  his 
own  home  and  even  there  found  little  welcome.  Cath- 
erine's friends  had  been  careful  to  inform  her  of  the 
effect  of  his  utterances  and  not  of  his  doings.  When 
she  found  that  out  of  the  three  thousand  pounds  he  had 
left  in  the  world  he  had  given  one  thousand  to  the 
Mayor  of  Thrigsby 's  fund  she  was  furious.  How  could 
it  help  the  starving  poor  if  they  also  starved?  He  said 
he  would  work.  What  work? — "There  will  be  work," 


DISASTER  513 


he  said,  "when  the  war  is  over." — "And  till  then?"— 
"Till  then  there  is  no  need  for  anxiety." — "But  I  am 
anxious." — "Without  reason.  You  can  have  the  control 
of  what  we  have  left,  if  you  like." 

She  turned  to  Mrs.  Halloran  and  plunged  into  the  new 
gaiety  with  which  a  certain  section  of  Thrigsbeian  so- 
ciety had  endeavoured  to  lighten  the  dark  hours.  Jamie 
shut  himself  up  with  his  old  refuge  The  Faerie  Queene 
and  for  many  weeks  saw  no  one  but  his  mother,  Tibby 
and  Fanny,  in  the  one  house  where  he  could  feel  any 
stirring  of  the  love  of  his  vision.  For  he  had  become 
visionary.  The  world  of  material  things  had  dwindled. 
He  took  so  little  interest  in  it  that  it  was  hardly  even 
comic.  He  had  a  terrible  period  when  he  thought  of 
human  beings  as  mere  animals  controlled  entirely  by 
their  physical  functions,  having  no  connection  with  each 
other  save  in  the  satisfaction  of  their  lusts  so  that  their 
minds  bred  nothing  but  lies,  in  the  accumulation  of 
which  they  were  suffocated  and  brought  to  ruin :  and 
even  when  in  appearance  they  had  risen  above  this 
brutish  condition  they  were  frozen  by  their  hypocrisy. 
It  seemed  to  him  true  what  his  friend  the  editor  had 
said,  that  their  main  object  in  life,  once  they  were  fed, 
was  to  avoid  thinking.  He  was  thoroughly  exhausted 
and  reduced  almost  to  apathy,  through  which  there 
thrilled  slowly  a  tremulous  happiness  that  brought  with 
it  a  strange  child-like  courage  to  bear  injustice,  evil,  and 
even  spiritual  failure  with  a  stiffened  lip  and  head  erect. 
His  vision  found  the  support  of  a  rough  hard-headed 
common-sense,  a  belief  that  the  confused  appearance  of 
things  was  somehow  an  expression  of  a  clear  reality, 
much  as  to  his  mother  the  world  was  an  expression  of 
the  God  whom  she  so  worshipped  in  her  quiet  devotion. 
But  life  as  he  had  known  it  was  so  much  greater  than 


5H  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

that  God,  who  had  become  only  a  limitation  of  life  and 
a  drag  upon  it,  so  that  an  emotion  fashioned  in  his  image 
was  immediately  abstracted  from  life  and  ceased  to  be 
effective  in  it.  It  was  absurd  now  that  so  many  natural 
forces  had  been  released  and  the  impact  of  men  in  the 
mass  upon  the  individual  had  become  so  powerful  as  to 
force  the  individual  to  react  or  perish — it  was  absurd 
to  suppose  that  God  had  accomplished  his  creation  once 
and  for  all.  With  the  resources  of  modern  life  such  a 
creation  had  become  the  prey  of  men. — "The  world's 
mine  oyster." — Creation  was  not  accomplished.  It  was 
continuous  and  unceasing  and  in  it  every  living  thing 
had  its  share,  destroying  and  creating. 

Jamie  lost  himself  in  a  maze  of  metaphysical  ideas, 
striving  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man  and  also  to 
enlarge  his  idea  of  God.  As,  however,  he  had  a  brain 
that  could  not  think  for  twenty  minutes  without  taking 
fire,  he  soon  sought  relief  either  in  reading  or  in  writing, 
constructed  nothing,  and  was  left  without  any  other 
guide  than  his  own  honest  humanity.  That  saved  him 
from  the  contempt  into  which  in  his  more  despairing 
moments  he  was  in  danger  of  falling.  Both  his  temper 
and  his  humour  were  mellowed  and  he  was  left  without 
rancour.  Thrigsby  was  itself  again,  more  itself  than 
ever,  for  the  lot  of  the  poor  was  in  no  way  alleviated  and 
a  period  of  prosperity  had  set  in  to  produce  an  un- 
precedented expansion  of  trade.  The  famine  had  been 
to  the  manufacturers,  merchants,  and  shippers  no  more 
than  a  bad  year  to  a  farmer.  They  had  weathered  it 
somehow  and  must  make  up  for  it.  Of  deeper  effects 
there  was  no  sign,  though  there  was  an  increase  of  agi- 
tation among  the  working  people.  Jamie  had  hoped  for 
a  collapse  but  there  was  none.  If  anything  there  was 
more  frankness  in  the  avarice  of  the  business  men  and 


DISASTER  515 


less  cant  about  the  future  of  England  and  Thrigsby. 
There  was  even  less  civic  sense.  Local  politics  were 
of  less  importance  and  it  was  hardly  a  distinction  to  be  a 
member  of  the  Town  Council.  The  Mayor  and  Alder- 
men were,  if  they  were  noticed  at  all,  objects  of  ridicule. 
Still,  the  gain  in  frankness  was  something.  Decent  peo- 
ple could  have  a  quiet  life  and  keep  themselves  to  them- 
selves. That  was  all  Jamie  desired.  He  had  been  hurt 
and  bruised  and  felt  too  crippled  to  enter  the  scramble 
again.  He  had  painful  hours  with  Catherine  trying  to 
reconcile  her  to  the  idea  of  being  poor.  It  was  difficult 
but  he  was  so  kind  to  her  that  she  could  not  take  excep- 
tion and  she  could  find  no  argument  in  favour  of  riches 
that  he  was  not  able  to  demolish  with  a  word  or  two. 
His  attitude  towards  her  now  was  that  she  was  the 
wife  of  his  bosom,  the  woman  with  whom  through  fair 
weather  and  foul  he  would  go  hand  in  hand.  They  had 
had  their  pleasure  and  their  torment,  there  was  now  no 
room  for  sentiment.  She  was  the  fellow-creature  with 
whom  it  was  his  fate  to  live  and  quarrel  and  kiss  and 
bring  up  children.  She  would  always  be  a  romantic 
figure  to  him  and  for  the  rest  there  would  be  one  long 
struggle  to  keep  life  decent  until  the  end.  He  had  no 
room  in  his  life  for  folly  and  hoped  that  in  time  there 
would  be  no  room  for  it  in  hers  either.  In  the  mean- 
time it  was  not  for  him  to  dictate  to  her  what  she  should 
or  should  not  do.  He  gave  her  full  freedom  and  so  im- 
pressed her  that  for  a  time  she  sobered  down.  They 
were  brought  together  also  by  a  great  grief.  In  the  mid- 
dle of  their  greatest  perplexity  they  received  the  news 
that  Sophia,  to  whom  they  were  both  fondly  attached, 
had  died  suddenly.  She  had  been  delicate  ever  since  her 
return  from  Australia,  and  her  life  with  John  had  been 
a  pilgrimage  from  place  to  place  in  search  of  a  climate 


516  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

that  would  suit  her.  Bournemouth  had  seemed  to  en- 
courage her  vitality,  but  she  died  there  and  John  was 
left  with  his  two  boys. 

Margaret  wished  to  go  to  him  but  it  was  generally 
agreed  that  she  was  too  old.  Tibby  offered  herself  but 
the  affair  was  settled  by  John's  having  a  violent  and  bitter 
quarrel  with  the  Greigs  over  Sophia's  estate  in  the  course 
of  which  he  made  himself  so  detestable  and  feeling  ran 
so  high  that  there  was  a  breach  between  the  two  families. 
Tom  gave  up  his  house  and  withdrew  to  Cheadley  Edge 
and  Mrs.  Donald  bundled  Maggie  out  of  her  house. 
Poor  Maggie  had  given  up  all  thought  of  fending  for 
herself  and  returned,  bewildered  and  abashed,  ashamed 
and  conscious,  for  the  first  time  for  years,  of  her  wig,  to 
her  mother's  house.  There  she  shut  herself  up  in  her 
room  and  would  see  no  one  but  Fanny,  for  whom  she  con- 
ceived a  great  affection.  John  for  the  time  being  took 
up  his  residence  with  Tom,  the  boys  being  turned  into 
Jamie's  nursery. 

So  the  family  was  united  once  more  and  Jamie  with 
a  quizzical  eye  was  able  to  measure  its  achievement, 
solid,  respectable,  unadventurous :  three  quiet  households, 
established  at  the  cost  of  what  suffering  and  poverty  to 
others !  He  and  his  brothers  were  three  as  upright,  hon- 
est men  as  you  could  find  in  England  and  two  of  them 
were  perfectly  satisfied  that  no  more  could  be  asked  of 
them.  Successful  in  their  private  lives  they  intended 
henceforth  to  devote  themselves  to  the  public  service, 
that  is  to  say,  they  proposed  to  do  all  in  their  power  to 
destroy  the  influence  of  the  aristocracy  and  to  enlarge 
the  sphere  of  men  like  themselves  in  order  to  increase  the 
wealth  of  the  nation  and  to  consolidate  it  by  thrift.  So 
quiet,  so  peaceful,  so  ordered  would  the  life  of  the  coun- 
try become  that  all  other  nations  would  emulate  it  and 


DISASTER  517 


there  would  be  no  more  evil  in  the  world,  no  part  of  it 
would  be  closed  to  trade  and  its  blessings  and  black, 
brown,  yellow,  red  and  white  men  would  be  united  in 
honest  botherhood,  and  they  would  all  speak  English. 
It  was  a  joy  to  Jamie  to  listen  to  his  brothers  talk- 
ing, to  watch  them  oozing  with  a  quiet  satisfaction  and 
to  think  of  his  own  capital  trickling  away  while  he  did 
nothing.  They  had  no  idea  of  the  state  of  his  affairs. 
They  were  secret  with  each  other  and  though  they  knew 
Jamie  to  be  poor,  they  never  imagined  his  poverty  to  be 
such  as  to  disgrace  them.  They  regarded  him  as  a  little 
mad.  He  had  lost  his  head  during  the  crisis,  but  they 
supposed  him  to  be  shrewd  enough  to  have  made  some 
provision  for  himself.  It  was  often  on  the  tip  of  Jamie's 
tongue  to  tell  them,  but  he  decided  to  put  it  off  until  he 
was  compelled  by  poverty  to  do  so,  trusting  that  it  would 
never  happen.  When  it  became  necessary  he  would  make 
an  effort.  Until  it  became  necessary  he  could  not.  He 
was  so  happy  in  his  freedom,  or  at  least  in  his  discovery 
of  the  way  to  it  through  what  he  called  living  sympathy. 
It  was  his  passionate  and  absorbing  pursuit  to  be  with 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  He  would  go  first  of 
all  to  Tibby,  with  whom  his  sympathy  would  be  roused  to 
a  high  pitch  of  activity,  and  then  he  would  welcome  any 
company  that  came  his  way,  taking  a  passionate  and 
impersonal  interest  in  all  that  was  said  and  done.  It 
seemed  absurd  and  pathetic  to  him  then  that  people's 
lives  should  be  so  personal  and  egoistic.  They  were  so 
stiff  and  cramped  that  even  in  what  was  purely  personal 
they  could  express  no  force  or  keen  vitality.  About  Tom 
and  John  for  instance  there  was  a  queer  perfection  which 
made  them  seem  almost  automatic,  very  like  animals 
except  that  they  had  none  of  the  sleek  contentment  of 
animals  and  no  high  spirits.  They  had  no  interest  out- 


518  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

side  the  reduction  of  life  to  the  terms  of  commerce  and 
they  believed  themselves  to  have  succeeded. 

The  air  of  the  melancholy  widower  suited  John  ad- 
mirably. He  was  hushed  and  subdued.  He  took  a  little 
house  at  Cheadley  Edge  to  be  near  Tom.  Maggie  went 
to  be  his  housekeeper  and  took  Fanny  with  her.  Sophia 
was  canonised.  The  little  house  was  a  shrine  to  her 
memory  and  Maggie's  piety  found  full  vent  in  being 
priestess  in  it.  For  a  time  the  little  house  became  the 
central  point  of  the  family's  existence.  Its  members 
were  grouped  round  the  memory  of  Sophia  as  the  Greigs 
had  been  grouped  round  the  memory  of  old  Angus.  A 
visit  to  John's  house  was  a  pilgrimage. 

Jamie  was  depressed  by  it  all  without  at  first  knowing 
why.  He  recognised  the  assertion  of  the  family  prin- 
ciple but  could  not  acquiesce  in  it,  for  it  was  an  offence 
both  to  his  vision  and  to  his  common-sense.  It  was 
empty  and  meaningless,  terrible  indeed,  for  it  meant  that 
the  family  could  only  hold  together  by  living  in  the  dead. 

At  last  one  Sunday  when  they  were  all  gathered  at 
John's  house  he  could  endure  it  no  more  and  blurted  out 
the  lamentable  state  of  his  affairs,  that  he  had  been  living 
on  his  capital  and  in  another  few  months  would  be  re- 
duced to  penury  and  unable  to  contribue  to  his  mother's 
income. — "  'Pon  my  honour,"  said  Tom,  "this  is  the  last 
straw!  And  what  pray  have  you  been  doing  all  these 
months?" — "Nothing,"  replied  Jamie. — "Come,  come, 
this  is  no  time  for  fooling.  You  are  not  a  boy.  You 
must  have  realised  how  criminal  it  is  to  touch  your  capi- 
tal."—"I  didn't  see  what  else  I  could  do."— "You  could 
have  worked." — "That  is  just  the  point.  I  couldn't.  I 
wanted  to  think  things  out. "--"Rubbish.  You  have  a 
wife  and  children." — "I  supposed  that,  if  the  worst 
came  to  the  worst,  the  family  would  look  after  them." 


DISASTER  519 


-"Shameless!"  cried  Tom. — "I  think  it  will  be  shameful 
if  the  family  doesn't  look  after  them." — "And  you  pro- 
pose to  sit  still  and  fill  your  great  hulking  body  with  the 
bread  of  charity?" — "I  don't  see  what  else  I  can  do.  I'm 
finished.  I  don't  know  why,  but  I'm  finished.  I  couldn't 
even  do  a  clerk's  work  well  enough  to  be  kept  on  after 
a  month's  trial.  You  see,  I  don't  believe  in  any  single 
branch  of  the  whole  business.  I  think  we're  all  finished. 
We've  done  harm  enough  in  all  conscience  and  the  only 
reparation  we  can  make  is  to  do  nothing." — "Disgusting 
nonsense!"  cried  Tom,  "and  I  for  one  shall  not  raise  a 
finger  to  help  you.  A  man  who  can  think  and  say  such 
things  deserves  to  die  in  a  ditch  and  to  be  buried  as  a 
pauper.  I  think  John  agrees  with  me."  He  glared  at 
John. — "I  agree,"  said  John,  "in  theory." — "I  have  no 
use  for  theory  that  is  not  in  accordance  with  practice."- 
"Then  you  ought  to  approve  of  me."  said  Jamie,  "for 
I  hold  exactly  the  same  view." — Tom  rapped  on  the 
table : — "But  would  you  hold  the  same  views  if  you  did 
not  know  that  your  brothers  were  rich  men?" — "If  we 
were  a  poor  family,"  replied  Jamie,  "I  should  go  to  bed 
and  let  Catherine  go  out  charing,  but  then,  if  we  were 
poor,  we  should  not  be  plagued  with  all  this  nonsense 
about  the  family.  We  should  know  that  the  family 
could  do  no  more  for  us  than  the  nation  and  that  there 
was  absolutely  nothing  to  support  us  in  time  of  trouble. 
I  have  done  my  best  for  the  family  and  I  have  failed 
because  I  never  realised  that  the  family's  idea  of  a  good 
life  and  mine  were  hopelessly  at  variance.  I  have  to  put 
up  with  the  consequences  of  my  folly  and  the  family 
repudiates  its  responsibilities.  Very  well  then.  We  need 
not  quarrel.  I  will  go  my  own  way.  Come,  Catherine." 
—"Stop!"  said  Tom,  and  "Stop,"  cried  John.— Mar- 
garet, who  had  been  reduced  to  tears,  slipped  from  the 


520  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

room. — "If  Sophia  were  here,"  said  John,  looking  down 
his  nose,  "she  would  put  us  all  right.  We  had  many 
painful  scenes  somewhat  resembling  this  with  her  family. 
Sophia,  who  was  an  angel,  could  always  find  a  solution." 
— "In  this  instance,"  said  Jamie,  "the  only  possible  solu- 
tion is  mine.  If  you  cannot  stomach  the  idea  of  our 
living  from  hand  to  mouth  then  leave  us  alone.  You  can 
have  the  pleasure  of  abusing  me  as  much  as  you  like. 
Either  you  share  the  goods  of  the  family  with  those  who 
are  unable  to  contribute  to  them  or  you  must  acknowl- 
edge that  the  family  is  just  a  sham." — "I  do  not  ac- 
knowledge anything  of  the  kind.  What  I  want  to  know 
is  what  Catherine  has  to  say  to  all  this."  Catherine  drew 
herself  up  with  spirit  and  said :  "I  certainly  do  not  intend 
to  live  on  charity.  I  don't  understand  what  Jamie  is 
talking  about  and  I  am  very  angry  with  him,  for  I  had 
no  idea  that  we  were  living  on  our  capital,  but  if  it  is  a 
choice  between  him  and  you,  then  my  place  is  by  his 
side." — "That,"  said  John,  "is  exactly  what  Sophia 
would  have  said." — "I  think,"  remarked  Agnes,  who 
had  not  till  now  uttered  a  word,  "that  Jamie  is  per- 
fectly right." — "Hold  your  tongue,"  snapped  Tom.  "I 
am  prepared  to  make  you  an  offer,  now,  once  and  for  all, 
of  three  pounds  a  week,  to  be  paid  to  Catherine."- 
"Come  along,  Catherine,"  said  Jamie.  "There  is  nothing 
more  to  be  said."  With  that  he  took  his  wife  by  the  arm 
and  dragged  her  out. 

Outside  Catherine's  spirit  left  her  and  she  began  to 
scold  him: — "Whatever  shall  we  do?  How  could  you 
make  such  a  terrible  scene  ?  I  declare  I  thought  I  should 
have  fainted.  I  was  so  ashamed.  There  was  no  need 
for  them  to  know.  However  poor  we  got  we  need  never 
have  let  them  know,  for  you  will  easily  find  something 
to  do  if  you  only  look.  You  can't  go  on  for  ever  doing 


DISASTER  521 


nothing." — "I  wish  I  could,"  said  Jamie,  "I  would 
rather  do  nothing  than  work,  if  work  means  making  the 
rich  richer  and  the  poor  poorer." — "What  does  it  mat- 
ter ?"  said  she.  "There  always  have  been  rich  and  poor 
and  there  always  will  be." — "Very  well,"  answered 
Jamie,  "we  will  be  neither,  for  I  see  no  other  way  out  of 
it.  Only,  it  would  not  be  fair  to  do  that  without  letting 
them  know." — "They  will  never  forgive  you,"  said  she. 
— "Nor  will  I  ever  forgive  them,  or  the  Keiths  or  the 
Greigs  for  what  they  have  done." — "But  the  children 
must  be  educated." — "At  a  pinch  I  can  teach  them  my- 
self. But  I  don't  think  the  pinch  will  come,  for  I  feel 
that  anything  is  possible,  now  that  I  have  broken  away 
from  all  that  nonsense  about  our  being  better  than  other 
people  and  therefore  entitled  to  impose  vile  conditions  on 
them.  I  can't  begin  my  life  all  over  again,  but  at  least 
I  can  keep  clear  of  the  old  conspiracy  and  fraud  and 
do  as  little  harm  as  possible." 

However,  when  it  came  to  working  or  starving  he 
found  it  impossible  to  be  altogether  clear.  His  only 
opening  was  with  the  newspapers  and  they  were  inex- 
tricably tied  up  with  what  he  regarded  as  the  swindle  of 
Thrigsby.  If  he  maintained  his  extreme  position  and 
demanded  perfect  honesty  in  all  his  dealings  then  he  must 
starve.  It  began  to  dawn  on  him  that  honesty  was  an 
intellectual  attribute,  only  to  be  won  by  hard  striving, 
and  that  it  was  unreasonable  to  expect  it  from  men  who 
had  to  work  ten  hours  a  day.  It  was  as  absurd  to  ex- 
pect that  as  to  insist  on  emotional  honesty  from  his  wife. 
That  he  had  long  ago  abandoned.  His  love  and  hers 
were  different.  His  was  ecstatic  and  eager  to  prove  the 
wonderful  richness  of  human  nature  with  its  inexhausti- 
ble stores  of  feeling.  To  nine-tenths  of  his  emotions 
Catherine  was  blind,  so  that  they  fell  upon  the  air  and 


522  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

drifted  away.  They  met  no  kindred  emotions  in  her  to 
which  they  could  be  wedded.  Her  love  was  steadfast, 
solid,  asking  only  a  genial  welcome  from  his  and,  when 
she  had  that,  she  was  satisfied.  She  hardly  needed  more 
than  affection  and  had  no  emotional  curiosity.  For  that 
reason  her  adventures  with  Mrs.  Halloran  had  soon 
palled  on  her  and  she  welcomed  the  compromise  at  which 
her  husband  arrived.  It  meant  the  employment  of  a 
multitude  of  subtle  lies  which  hurt  him,  though  he  put 
up  with  them  when  he  saw  that  no  other  machinery 
was  possible.  He  had  no  reason  to  believe  that  with 
another  woman  his  position  would  have  been  any  better. 
The  compromise  in  his  marriage  helped  him  to  accept 
the  necessary  compromise  in  his  outward  life  and,  when 
he  was  offered  a  commission  to  go  to  the  Southern  States 
to  report  on  conditions  and  prospects  there,  he  accepted 
it.  It  meant  assisting  the  traffic  in  cotton,  which  was 
really  a  traffic  in  labour,  but  he  did  not  see  how  he  could 
prevent  that  by  refusing.  If  he  rejected  the  offer  he 
might  have  to  accept  a  worse  and  the  prospect  of  travel 
excited  him.  There  was,  or  he  thought  there  was,  a 
stirring  of  liberty  in  America,  where  men  might  be  on 
the  point  of  discovering  a  means  of  extricating  them- 
selves from  the  meshes  in  which  they  were  caught.  He 
was  to  be  handsomely  paid  and  Catherine  was  to  have 
an  allowance  during  his  absence.  She  was  glad  for  him 
to  go,  hoping  that  he  might  be  happier  for  the  change. 
Also  the  commission  was  an  important  one  and  it  was 
well  advertised  by  the  newspaper.  Jamie  was  forgiven 
by  his  family  and  Agnes  called  on  Catherine.  Agnes 
said: — "Tom  doesn't  know  I'm  here.  He  is  completely 
baffled  by  Jamie,  and  says  he  has  nine  lives  like  a  cat. 
And  really  it  is  wonderful  how  nothing  keeps  him  down. 
I  envy  you,  dear  Catherine,  for  you  must  have  a  most 


DISASTER  523 


exciting  life,  though  you  must  hate  his  going  away. 
Tom  has  an  idea  that  Jamie  will  settle  in  America.  "- 
"I'm  sure  he  won't,"  said  Catherine,  "he  always  says  that 
he  belongs  to  Thrigsby  and  could  not  settle  anywhere 
else.  He  has  changed  lately,  you  know.  He  used  to 
carry  on  and  rage  against  the  place  and  the  people."- 
"Dear  Catherine,"  said  Agnes,  "Tom  is  very  obstinate 
and  in  some  things  very  foolish,  but  because  our  hus- 
bands quarrel  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should,  and  I 
want  you  to  promise  me  that  if  anything  happens  to 
Jamie  you  will  let  me  help  you." — "Thank  you,  Agnes," 
said  Catherine.  "As  you  say,  there  is  no  reason  why 
we  should  quarrel  about  things  we  do  not  understand. 
There  is  trouble  enough  in  the  world  without  our  mak- 
ing more." — "I  mean,"  said  Agnes,  "that,  as  I  have  no 
children  of  my  own,  I  don't  like  being  denied  my  share 
in  yours." — "Dear  Agnes,"  said  Catherine,  and  the  two 
women  kissed  and  made  their  peace. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

A  LETTER  FROM  LONDON 


A  MONTH  or  two  before  these  critical  events  Mary 
had  returned  to  England  from  her  travels.  She 
had  made  valuable  acquaintances  in  Rome  who  had  given 
her  good  introductions  to  distinguished  families  in  Lon- 
don. There  she  was  soon  installed  in  the  household  of 
a  Canon  of  Westminster  as  governess.  When  she  heard 
of  her  loved  brother's  American  project  she  wrote: 

"DEAREST, — I  am  overjoyed.  At  last  you  are  finding 
yourself  doing  work  in  which  it  is  a  joy  to  me  to  think 
of  you.  And  your  letters  lately  have  been  such  a  happi- 
ness to  me,  making  me  feel  foolish  ever  to  have  been 
disappointed  in  you.  My  youthful  hopes  of  course  de- 
served disappointment :  they  were  vulgar  dreams  of  suc- 
cess, acclamation,  of  your  being,  somehow,  a  conqueror. 
They  were  on  a  level  with  my  ambitions  for  myself — a 
glittering  marriage,  a  salon,  Madame  de  Stae'l.  But  now 
that  I  am  an  old  maid  and  a  very  happy  one,  our  history 
as  it  has  been  seems  to  me  much  more  wonderful  than 
anything  I  could  ever  imagine,  and  far  more  romantic 
than  the  most  brilliant  inventions.  It  is  such  fun  to 
know  that  you  are  a  perfectly  ordinary  person  and  yet 
that  you  contain  the  oddest  dramas  that  ever  were  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  For  after  all,  what  matters  to  us 

524 


A  LETTER  FROM  LONDON  525 

all,  both  individually  and  collectively,  is  daily  life.  His- 
tory is  concerned  with  the  absurd  and  rather  theatrical 
doings  of  a  few  people  which,  after  all,  have  never 
altered  the  fact  that  we  do  all  of  us  live  on  from  day 
to  day  and  only  want  to  be  left  alone.  Things  happen 
to  us  but  the  central  fact  remains.  I  mean  that  I,  for 
instance,  as  an  old  maid  do  certainly  enjoy  my  life 
as  much  as  if  I  had  married.  It  is  another  kind  of 
life,  that  is  all,  and  neither  better  nor  worse  than  the 
other.  My  best  friends  are  men,  and  I  doubt  if  they 
would  be  if  I  were  married,  though  then,  of  course, 
I  should  have  other  means  of  gaining  human  interests. 
I  am  quite  sure  that  love  has  a  thousand  meanings  be- 
sides the  one  that  is  usually  attached  to  it  and  that  that 
meaning  attaches  to  it  a  burden  greater  than  it  can 
bear.  It  is  monstrous  that  love  should  be  excluded  from 
every  other  relationship  than  the  conjugal.  I  suffer 
from  that  exclusion  here  for  my  little  pupils  are  simply 
and  most  cruelly  denied  love.  Their  father  is  an  Hon. 
aa  well  as  a  Rev.  and  our  childhood  was  a  paradise  com- 
pared with  what  he  thinks  right  for  his  boy  and  girl. 
He  seems  to  wish  to  make  stoics  of  them  and  certainly 
they  have  courage  and  self-reliance.  'Always  tell  the 
truth  except  when  you  are  afraid'  is  one  of  his  maxims, 
stated  because  the  boy  confessed  that  he  was  afraid  of 
the  dark.  And  as  the  boy  is  afraid  of  his  father  and 
will  not  admit  it  to  himself  he  is  growing  into  the  most 
wretched  kind  of  liar.  I  talk  to  the  children  about  you 
and  they  love  you.  All  their  favourite  stories  have  to 
do  with  you,  and  they  adore  some  of  the  absurd  non- 
sensical poems  you  used  to  write  in  your  letters.  I  miss 
your  nonsense.  I  wonder  if  it  will  come  back  to  you. 
Perhaps  your  flight  to  America  will  do  that  for  you, 
though  you  will  see  many  tragic  sights  there.  Somehow 


526  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

I  always  think  of  you  now  as  a  tragic  person,  and  I 
don't  mind.  I  should  have  been  heart-broken  ten  years 
ago  but  was  too  foolish  then  to  realise  that  there  is  no 
tragedy  without  inward  nobility.  Somehow  whatever 
happens  to  you  I  am  always  able  to  rejoice  in  you.  Per- 
haps (awful  thought)  that  has  become  a  habit  with  me. 
No,  no,  no.  I  will  never  let  it  be  that.  I  have  taken 
you  through  all  my  experiences  and  you  have  not  only 
survived  them  all  but  have  quickened  them  for  me. 
There!  If  you  had  never  done  anything  else,  you  will 
have  done  that.  Measured  by  results,  of  course,  that 
does  not  look  very  much,  for  a  governess,  even  with 
three  languages,  is  an  insignificant  person  and  is  not 
entitled  to  experience  of  any  kind.  I  think  the  house- 
maid is  in  a  better  position  than  I,  for  at  least  her  posi- 
tion is  clear,  while  I  have  humiliation  unmitigated.  After 
my  free  life  abroad  you  can  imagine  how  I  chafe  against 
it.  I  am  allowed  to  have  nothing  in  common  with  any- 
body in  the  house  but  the  children.  I  should  have 
thought  my  travels  would  have  interested  the  Hon.  and 
Rev.,  but  no;  he  is  not  interested  in  the  Germans,  or  the 
Swiss  or  the  Italians.  The  Germans  eat  sausages  and 
the  Italians  eat  macaroni :  that  is  all  he  knows  about  them 
and  he  finds  it  disgusting.  Rome  means  to  him  the 
Roman  Church.  He  never  thinks  of  it  as  a  city  with 
delightful  people  living  in  it.  On  the  other  .hand  he 
thinks  of  London  as  a  place  containing  the  Abbey  and 
Dean's  Yard.  All  the  rest  has  no  justifiable  existence. 
At  the  same  time  he  is  an  intelligent  man,  very  simple 
and  good  and  kind,  so  long  as  everything  is  in  its  place. 
The  children  are  in  their  place,  I  in  mine  and  he  in  his, 
in  iron  authority  above  us.  I  greet  over  it  but,  against 
my  will,  I  admire  it,  for  it  is  disconcertingly  English. 
I  find  it  hard  to  explain  the  difference.  In  the  home  of 


A  LETTER  FROM  LONDON  527 

freedom  I  am  less  free  than  I  have  ever  been.  In  other 
countries  the  whole  point  of  discipline  is  to  civilise  the 
emotions,  but  in  England  there  are  no  emotions  allowed 
at  all.  The  whole  point  of  civilisation  is  lost  sight  of 
altogether.  Even  the  most  charming  and  delightful 
people  have  no  communication  with  each  other.  Their 
savage  feelings  are  not  tamed  and  controlled  but  crushed, 
and  the  result  is  a  profound  melancholy  and  a  dull  heavi- 
ness. Coming  from  happy  and  intelligent  people  to  an 
atmosphere  of  religion — if  a  moral  code  is  a  religion — 
perhaps  I  am  unjust.  Perhaps,  like  you,  I  ought  to  ad- 
mire the  English  character  and  delight  in  English  oddity, 
but  we  Scots  have  been  educated  for  generations  and 
we  can  understand  the  Continental  peoples  better  than 
these  islanders.  We  are  able  to  have  some  glimmering 
of  the  meaning  of  civilisation  and  will  not  attempt  to  live 
civilised  lives  in  barbarous  conditions  and  with  barbarous 
aims.  If  we  are  forced  to  do  so,  as  we  are  in  our  own 
country,  we  take  refuge  in  metaphysics,  or,  like  some 
whom  I  could  name,  in  hypocrisy. 

"There:  my  adventures  are  done,  my  life  has  taken 
its  shape :  a  little  black-gowned  governess  whom  nobody 
heeds.  I  am  content.  Some  day  I  shall  retire  and  live 
unheeded  in  those  Blue  Mountains  of  ours  at  which  we 
used  to  gaze  so  longingly.  Little  did  we  dream  what 
lay  beyond  them!  Immediately  beyond  lay  the  Greigs: 
farther  on  Thrigsby  and  farther  still  London.  How 
different  from  the  free  open  world  of  our  imaginations ! 
And  yet,  could  we  have  imagined  anything  more  wonder- 
ful? Would  you  have  anything  different?  I  suppose 
you  would.  But  how?  You  would  have  people  less 
stupid  than  they  are?  The  world  would  be  a  dreadful 
place  without  its  fools.  You  think  the  ugliness  and 
cruelty  of  Thrigsby  unnecessary.  How  can  you  tell? 


528  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

You  say  yourself  that  you  cannot  leave  the  place.  It 
must  therefore  have  some  meaning  for  you,  even  if  it  is 
only  the  meaning  of  raw  energy.  I  may  be  wide  of  the 
mark  but  I  think  there  is  in  you  a  strain  of  the  hope  and 
impulse  that  were  felt  in  England  in  the  great  days  of 
Shelley,  Keats,  Byron  and  Wordsworth.  It  is  absurd  to 
think  that  could  die  altogether  or  indeed  at  all.  London 
as  I  see  it,  Thrigsby  as  you  see  it,  seem  to  be  a  complete 
denial,  but  are  they  really  anything  of  the  kind  ?  When 
I  consider  the  children  here  I  often  think  that  they 
are  more  right  by  instinct  than  they  will  ever  be  again 
by  knowledge.  Now  your  instinctive  idea  was  Napoleon, 
and  you  will  not  tolerate  anything  that  contradicts  that 
idea,  which  means,  not  conquest,  but  liberty  and  civilisa- 
tion. A  German  friend  of  mine  says,  and  I  think  he  is 
right,  that  the  English  do  not  understand  or  desire  any- 
thing but  comfort  and  independence,  which  are  to  them 
indispensable  adjuncts  of  liberty  and  they  would  rather 
forego  liberty  than  them.  The  poor  flock  to  the  towns 
because  they  can  be  more  comfortable  and  independent  in 
them  than  they  can  be  in  the  country :  or  they  think  they 
can.  (I  suppose  it  is  warmer  in  a  slum  than  it  is  in  a 
country  cottage  during  the  winter.)  In  the  towns  they 
work  to  create  comfort  and  independence  for  people  like 
the  Greigs.  Incidentally  they  destroy  all  that  you  cher- 
ish, grace  and  tenderness,  simple  and  profound  feeling, 
in  a  word,  liberty.  But  are  they  not  also  destroying  ideas 
and  habits  which  were  inimical  to  liberty?  And  does 
not  such  a  catastrophe  as  that  which  has  overtaken  them 
in  your  Thrigsby  make  them  feel  the  inadequacy  of 
comfort  and  independence?  It  has  made  you  feel  that,  I 
know,  and  what  you  feel  strongly  will  not  others  also 
feel  to  the  extent  of  their  capacity?  If  not,  there  must 
be  other  catastrophes  until  their  insensibility  is  broken 


A  LETTER  FROM  LONDON  529 

down.  Believe  me,  in  Germany  and  Italy  there  is  the 
same  force  stirring.  England  is  an  ideal  to  them.  They 
mistake  her  independence  for  liberty  and  do  not  realise 
that  she  has  a  harder  task  than  any  of  them.  I  have 
felt  since  I  came  to  London  that  the  English  must 
know  it  in  their  hearts  or  they  could  not  endure  the 
terrible  repression  in  which  they  live.  They  must  be- 
lieve in  some  future  triumph  or  they  could  not  so  harshly 
contain  themselves.  It  is  a  great  riddle  and  the  answer 
to  it  all  is  Napoleon — not  the  pinchbeck  Paris  gentleman, 
but  his  uncle  who  was  something  more  than  a  man,  an 
idea.  It  is  active  and  almost  articulate  in  you,  and  you 
care  about  it  more  than  about  anything  else.  But  the 
English  will  not  let  it  be  active  or  articulate  in  their 
life  until  they  have  ensured  their  comfort  and  their 
independence.  Perhaps  they  are  right  and  probably  they 
will  force  others  to  emulate  them.  Live  abroad  and 
you  will  appreciate  comfort  when  you  return  home. 
Meanwhile  one  suffers.  The  suppression  of  the  idea 
(and  in  the  modern  world  there  is  only  one  idea — Lib- 
erty)— means  the  suppression  of  art  and  religion.  It 
has  choked  the  poetry  that  I  used  to  hope  you  would 
one  day  find  in  yourself,  with  the  result  of  making  you 
look  for  poetry  in  life — a  pure  and  almost  abstract  emo- 
tion. The  amazing  thing  is  that  you  have  found  it  and 
that  makes  me  very  anxious  to  meet  your  wife.  You 
have  never  given  me  a  very  clear  idea  of  her  except  that 
.  she  is  beautiful.  Tibby  I  know,  Fanny  Shaw  I  know, 
Sophia  and  Selina  Leslie  are  admirably  drawn  in  your 
letters,  but  Catherine  is  mysterious.  I  suppose  she  is 
and  must  be  so  to  you,  and  it  is  only  tiresome  and  old- 
maidish  in  me  to  want  everything  clear-cut  and  precise. 
Very  unreasonable  too,  for  I  could  not  desire  for  you 
what  is  valuable  in  my  own  life  which  is  quite  easily 


530  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

pared  down  to  two  relationships,  with  you  and  with 
one  other.  Everything  else  seems  vain  and  pretentious, 
unreal,  shadowy,  easily  forgotten.  But  nothing  con- 
nected with  those  two  relationships  can  be  forgotten. 
They  live  in  me  and  I  in  them  and  I  would  not  change 
place  or  times  with  anyone,  not  even  to  be  Helen  of 
Troy  or  Cleopatra.  No  romance  was  ever  more  excit- 
ing than  my  quiet  little  existence  and  I  think  getting  out 
of  bed  in  the  morning  as  great  an  adventure  as  the  dis- 
covery of  America.  In  the  first  place  it  means  seeing  the 
light  of  day  again  and  in  the  second  it  means  letters. 
A  real  letter  is  a  revelation,  a  communication  from  the 
unknown.  Think  what  your  letters  have  been  to  me,  the 
letters  you  wrote  to  me  in  Rome  when  I  was  so  unhappy. 
I  was  able  to  live  in  the  life  of  the  family,  to  share  with 
you  the  torment  of  the  process  of  disintegration,  the 
inexplicable  collapse  of  the  fabric  of  its  authority,  the 
assertion  of  your  will,  setting  desire  above  accomplish- 
ment. 

"You  have  often  envied  me,  comparing  Thrigsby,  in 
your  droll  way,  to  Noah's  Ark,  with  the  animals  two  by 
two,  and  myself  as  the  dove  sent  out  to  explore  the 
flooded  face  of  the  earth.  I  can  only  report  that  the 
flood  has  not  subsided  and  now  you  yourself  are  to  go 
out  to  the  New  World.  Frankly  I  don't  think  you  will 
discover  anything  different.  The  flood  has  not  subsided 
and  will  not  subside.  How  can  it  when  there  are  people 
like  you  and  me  who  care  for  nothing  except  such 
freedom  as  they  can  find,  and  find  it  in  the  simple  love 
of  the  few  people  who  are  accessible  to  us?  We  may 
have  nothing  to  show  for  it  but  you  will  hand  on  more 
to  the  next  generation  than  Tom  who  can  only  bequeath 
his  fifty  or  his  hundred  thousand  pounds.  Not  that  I 
despise  Tom.  I  am  very  fond  of  him.  As  he  figures 


A  LETTER  FROM  LONDON  531 

in  your  letters  he  is  a  joy  for  ever,  the  perfect  incor- 
ruptible.— How  I  long  to  see  them  all!  I  arrived  in 
London  with  thirty  shillings  and  had  to  procure  work  at 
once.  Now  I  must  wait  until  one  year's  service  entitles 
me  to  three  weeks'  holiday.  I  shall  postpone  it  until 
your  return  from  America.  Then  what  a  talk  we  shall 
have!  I  shall  lie  on  my  bed  and  you  shall  look  out  of 
the  window  and  it  will  be  as  though  we  were  back  in 
Kirkcudbright  and  once  more  I  shall  struggle  to  cram 
your  big  thoughts  into  my  little  head.  Nothing  will  have 
changed,  so  true  is  it  as  Shelley  said  of  Beatrice  Cenci 
that  all  we  do  and  suffer  is  'as  the  mask  and  mantle  in 
which  circumstances  clothe  us  for  our  impersonation  on 
the  scene  of  the  world.'  Above  all  I  shall  be  able  to  tell 
you  much  that  I  could  never  bring  myself  to  write.  We 
shall  not  be  brother  and  sister  then  but  comrades  in  love 
and  mind.  Good-bye,  dearest  Jamie.  I  will  write  to 
Catherine  to  console  her  in  your  absence." 


CHAPTER  XLII 

MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND  HER 


LAST  scene  of  all  that  ends  this  strange  eventful  his- 
tory, the  last  gathering  of  the  family  of  the  Lawries, 
the  last  assertion  of  its  entity  before  it  is  swallowed  up 
in  the  roar  of  the  machinery  which  is  modern  England. 
A  week  before  Jamie  was  to  set  sail  from  Liverpool 
Margaret  fell  ill  of  an  internal  trouble  which  had  fast- 
ened upon  her  many  years  before  and  had  caused  that 
obstinate  abstraction  from  the  life  about  her  which  had 
culminated  in  her  withdrawal  from  Thrigsby.  She  knew 
that  she  was  brought  face  to  face  with  death,  and,  as  in 
the  case  of  her  husband,  she  wrestled  with  it  fiercely. 
She  was  not  prepared  to  die  thinking  herself  unworthy 
to  go  before  the  Judgment  Seat.  Her  days  had  been 
embittered  by  Jamie's  repudiation  of  his  brothers.  He 
had  failed,  she  thought:  he  had  renounced  his  trust.  In 
her  heart  she  hated  Catherine  who  had  ensnared  Jamie 
with  her  beauty,  a  terrible  culmination  to  all  his  wild- 
ness.  She  thought  of  Catherine  as  an  Englishwoman 
and  she  despised  the  English  as  a  people  who  com- 
promised in  their  religion,  a  wanton  and  a  light  people 
given  to  pleasure.  They  had  claimed  and  seduced  her 
eldest  son  and  she  thought  of  the  women  of  Thrigsby  as 
those  ladies  in  the  Bible  who  made  a  tinkling  with  their 
feet  and  were  threatened  with  scabs. — As  she  lay  in  her 

532 


MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND     533 

bed  Margaret  gathered  herself  up  into  one  violent  im- 
pulse of  hatred.  She  conjured  up  a  vile  and  wicked 
word,  assumed  responsibility  for  it  and  struggled  with 
it  mosaically.  She  totted  up  a  list  of  the  Commandments 
Jamie  had  broken  and,  to  include  the  seventh,  called  his 
marriage  adulterous.  It  was,  at  any  rate,  voluptuous 
and  should  be  included.  She  descended  into  the  very  pit 
of  misery  in  this  last  furious  attempt  to  break  down  the 
iron  discipline  she  had  imposed  on  herself,  and  the 
limitations  she  had  set  to  ensure  her  serenity.  The  sweet 
religious  melancholy  of  her  expression  was  ravaged  and 
her  eyes  burned  and  glowered.  She  put  forth  all  her 
extraordinary  physical  and  moral  strength  to  resist  the 
cataclysm  taking  place  within  her  and  she  became 
voluptuous  in  her  misery,  cherishing  every  fresh  pang, 
every  new  wave  of  agony  that  came  over  her.  She 
cheated  herself  in  order  to  cheat  the  physician,  who  as- 
sured her  that  she  would  soon  be  well  again.  Time  was 
what  she  wanted:  time  to  quell  the  revolt  and  doubt  in 
her  soul.  For  this  was  no  new  thing.  There  had  been 
such  struggles  all  through  her  life,  though  never  before 
had  there  been  so  terrible  an  issue.  This  was  final  and 
she  knew  it.  All  her  desire  was  for  the  love  of  her  later 
life,  her  love  for  Jamie,  and  she  could  not  enter  into  him 
because  his  doings  were  blasphemous,  and  could  not  be 
contained  within  the  walls  of  her  religious  conception  of 
the  world.  Her  love  bade  her  follow  him  but  she  could 
not.  She  had  always  pretended  that  he  would  come  back 
from  his  strange  courses  and  be  at  peace  with  her  and 
with  God.  Now  she  knew  that  her  pretence  had  been 
vain  and  that  he  had  sinned  past  redemption.  She  knew 
him  as  she  knew  none  other  of  her  children.  He  was 
more  than  flesh  of  her  flesh:  he  was  love  of  her  love. 
Through  him  she  had  a  terrible  knowledge  of  the  things 


534  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

of  the  earth  that  surged  in  upon  her  saintly  knowledge 
of  the  things  of  the  spirit.  It  was  her  effort  now  to  keep 
these  two  kinds  of  knowledge  apart.  She  desired  to  be 
prepared  to  meet  her  Maker,  but  with  this  hunger  for  her 
love  and  to  live  in  it  she  knew  herself  to  be  unready. 
Yet  she  could  not  keep  her  love  contained.  It  was 
passionately  concentrated  upon  Jamie.  It  knew  his  love 
for  Tibby,  Tibby's  for  him  and  it  was  kindled  by  it, 
reaching  to  a  white  heat  that  burned  through  all  his 
history,  coming  at  last  to  his  marriage  and  drowning 
it  with  flame  until  there  was  nothing  left  but  charred 
embers.  Against  the  idea  of  Catherine  Margaret  hurled 
herself  as  against  the  vilest  evil.  There,  there  was  the 
destruction  of  her  love  and  she  would  not  have  it.  If 
her  love  was  destroyed  she  could  never  make  her  peace 
with  God.  All  her  life  she  had  kept  it  pure  and  it  had 
been  a  psalm  of  praise.  But  now  its  virtue  was  gone  out 
from  her  and  for  the  lack  of  it  she  ached.  There  were 
times  when  she  believed  herself  to  be  already  in  hell-fire 
because  her  love  had  led  her  away  from  God,  who  to 
punish  her  had  removed  His  grace  from  Jamie  and  sent 
him  out  into  the  world  despoiled  and  exposed  to  tempta- 
tion and  the  snares  of  beauty. 

Sometimes  she  was  exhausted  and  lay  with  slow  tears 
trickling  from  her  eyes,  unable  to  move  even  so  much  as 
her  eyelids.  Tibby  found  her  so  one  evening  and  was 
shocked  and  frightened  and  stayed  with  her  until  she 
moved.  Then  Tibby  whispered: — "You  were  a  long 
time  away,  mistress." — "Is  there  only  you,  Tibby?"  mur- 
mured Margaret.  "There  were  the  five  of  them  and  you 
at  the  table,  and  now  there  is  only  you.  Your  father 
was  a  good  friend  to  me,  Tibby." — "And  you've  been  a 
good  friend  to  me,  mistress." — "Jamie!"  murmured 
Margaret,  "Jamie !"— "Shall  I  send  for  him?"  asked 


MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND     535 

Tibby. — "No!  No!  No!  I'm  very  well.  I'm  going  to 
get  better.  Jamie  was  a  fine,  handsome  man." — "Aye," 
said  Tibby. — "And  there  were  the  five  of  them  at  the 
table."— "Losh!"  muttered  Tibby,  "she's  light-headed!" 
— "I  am  nothing  of  the  kind,"  snapped  Margaret. 
"Whose  turn  is  it  to  come  this  week  ?"— "Tom's."— 
"He'll  talk  to  me  about  my  will.  I  don't  want  to  see 
him." — "Jamie  will  be  gone  soon  to  America." — Mar- 
garet began  to  weep.  She  thought  of  Jamie  already  gone 
with  no  issue  to  her  struggle,  and  her  love  leaped  within 
her  and  tortured  her.  Tibby,  watching  her,  saw  her 
throat  swell,  the  veins  in  it  stand  out,  and  the  skin  of  her 
face  contract.  Tibby  was  horrified  and  frightened  at 
the  cruelty  of  life  throbbing  through  the  obstinate  vital- 
ity of  her  old  mistress.  She  was  alone  in  the  house. 
Their  last  little  maid  had  left  them  a  week  before  Mar- 
garet's illness.  She  could  not  leave  for  a  moment.  She 
wrote  a  note  to  Jamie  and  sent  it  down  to  his  house  by 
a  neighbour  who  was  going  in  to  Thrigsby.  He  came 
out  at  once  prepared  to  stay  if  necessary. — "Is  she  dying, 
Tibby?"— "Aye."— "Is  she  happy?"— "I  think  she's  in 
terror.  She's  been  a  lonely  woman  for  so  long.  I  never 
saw  a  creature  suffer  so." — "Did  she  ask  for  me?" — 
"She  said  your  name." — "It  was  Tom  she  loved  best." — 
Tibby  looked  at  him  reproachfully,  and  said:  "She  de- 
clared she  would  not  see  Tom,  in  such  a  queer  funny 
voice  I  could  have  laughed,  but  that  it  was  so  sad." — 
"Will  the  end  soon  come?"— "I  cannot  tell.  She's 
strong." 

Jamie  sat  by  his  mother's  bedside  for  hours  before  she 
spoke.  He  held  her  thin  white  hand  in  his  and  it 
took  warmth  from  him.  Strange  shapeless  dream-like 
thoughts  flitted  through  his  mind,  mysterious  thoughts 
of  women,  grotesque  and  ugly  some  of  them,  beautiful 


536  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

and  inspiring  others.  It  was  very  slowly  that  these 
thoughts  began  to  gather  round  Margaret  and  to  give 
him  a  conception  of  her  as  a  woman,  even  as  the  woman 
whom  he  had  married.  Then  with  a  sudden  emotion 
that  shook  him  to  the  marrow  he  thought  of  her  as  the 
woman  from  whom  he  had  his  life.  Turning,  he  found 
his  mother's  eyes  upon  him  and  he  bent  to  her  and  kissed 
her  on  the  lips.  It  was  the  kiss  of  a  lover  and  she  drew 
him  down  into  the  depths  of  her  dying  life,  and  still  she 
held  his  hand  in  hers.  No  words  were  possible  for  a 
long  time.  Darkness  came  and  the  stars  shone  in  the 
sky  through  the  hurrying  autumn  clouds.  The  church 
bells  chimed  the  hours.  It  was  very  snug  in  the  little 
grey  room,  very  snug  and  warm  and  time  could  pass 
it  by. 

"Shall  I  read  to  you,  mother?" — "Yes,  Jamie.  Read 
me  the  story  of  Ruth." — He  read  the  story  of  Ruth  and 
found  when  he  had  done  that  she  had  her  eyes  closed.— 
"Are  you  asleep,  mother?" — She  made  no  answer  but 
she  was  not  asleep,  she  was  slyly  telling  herself  that  she 
had  fulfilled  her  love  and  that  God  would  forgive  her 
because  she  had  loved  much.  She  had  taken  Jamie  away 
from  Catherine  and  God  would  be  pleased  with  her  be- 
cause she  had  conquered  that  much  evil.  Catherine,  she 
knew,  had  never  loved  him  so.  Catherine  had  taken  all 
for  her  beauty,  had  taken  all  but  him,  whom  she  had 
left  cold  and  solitary. — "The  Lord  do  so  to  me  and  more 
also,  if  ought  but  death  part  thee  and  me." — Margaret 
hugged  the  thought  that  she  had  the  love  of  her  first- 
born. It  was  the  whole  world  to  her  and  she  would  not 
renounce  it  though  she  knew  she  was  about  to  die  and 
must  go  out  of  the  world  naked  as  when  she  came  into 
it.  It  might  mean  damnation  and  the  loss  of  her  im- 
mortal soul  but  she  would  suffer  that  for  this  last  pas- 


MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND     537 

sion.  All  her  beliefs  became  pictorial,  a  matter  of  golden 
crowns  and  white  singing  angels,  and  when  she  came 
near  sleep  then  all  the  place  where  she  lay  was  filled  with 
the  glitter  of  gold  and  the  song  of  the  angels.  But  she 
would  not  let  herself  sleep,  for  she  thought  she  might 
never  wake  up  again  and  she  wanted  her  love  till  the  end. 
This  was  the  fiercest  conflict.  All  her  life  she  had  fought 
for  Heaven  against  love.  Now  she  found  herself  wres- 
tling with  all  her  might  for  love  against  Heaven  and 
never  had  she  been  so  strong,  never  so  entirely  absorbed 
in  her  will.  Her  old  terror  had  been  of  the  future: 
now  she  was  afraid  when  she  looked  back  and  saw  the 
procession  of  empty  loveless  days  streaming  away  from 
her.  The  past  was  appallingly  actual  to  her  and  it  seemed 
that  she  must  live  in  it.  The  spent  days  moving  away 
seemed  to  drag  her  in  their  wake,  down  from  the  heaven 
of  her  love.  The  whole  careful  structure  of  her  life 
seemed  to  crumble,  to  crack,  to  be  about  to  come  crashing 
down.  Her  thoughts  rushed  hither  and  thither,  patching 
here  and  propping  there. — "Now,  now,  it  is  coming,"  she 
told  herself,  thrilled  with  horror,  "and  I  shall  be  de- 
stroyed." 

There  were  times  when  her  mental  life  ceased  alto- 
gether and  she  was  absorbed  in  the  physical  struggle 
to  retain  her  vitality.  Then  she  would  lie,  apparently 
in  a  swoon,  but  in  reality  crouching  and  wary,  practising 
an  instinctive  and  most  subtle  economy  of  her  forces. 
Victory  in  that  region  was  easy  and  had  little  sweetness. 
Always  when  she  felt  that  she  had  won  the  mastery 
she  would  come  back  to  the  greater  conflict  to  preserve 
her  love  from  death  and  from  the  past.  She  would 
go  back  over  the  whole  of  her  life  measuring  the  right 
and  wrong,  but  she  had  no  standard  wherewith  to 
measure.  She  could  not  be  interested  in  any  of  her 


538  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

life  except  in  so  far  as  it  had  touched  her  husband's  and 
her  son's,  and  therein  had  been  neither  right  nor  wrong. 
Fool  that  she  had  been  not  to  have  known  that  always. 
The  days  would  not  be  spent.  They  would  not  be  hurry- 
ing away  from  her.  Her  thoughts  crept  up  into  her 
imagination,  which  darted  down  upon  the  hurrying  days, 
claiming  those  which  had  contained  some  love  and  bid- 
ding them  come  back  to  her.  This  was  a  new  power 
and  she  exulted  in  it,  for  it  brought  a  wonderful  light 
into  her  love  and  opened  up  new  regions  in  Jamie's  life. 
She  knew  now  whither  he  had  retired  when  he  had 
seemed  lost  to  her  and  she  knew  that  she  should  have 
followed  him  and  not  have  expected  him  to  stay  with 
her  in  the  dreamy,  quiet,  prosperous  days  where  love 
was  not.  She  saw  herself  suddenly  going  down  with 
him  into  the  strong-room  of  the  bank  among  the  bags  o£ 
gold  and  she  remembered  how  awed  and  impressed  she 
had  been  and  how  he  had  smiled  at  her.  Then  she  was 
in  such  pain  that  she  broke  into  a  dry  cackle  of  bitter 
laughter.  At  once  Jamie  was  kneeling  by  her  bedside 
and  held  her  in  his  arms  to  soothe  her.  She  raised  her 
hand  and  ran  her  fingers  through  his  hair. — "Grey  hair 
you're  getting,  Jamie,  and  white  hairs  in  your  beard." — 
"Yes,  mother,  but  I'm  still  a  child  in  your  arms." — She 
gave  a  little  crooning  cry  of  pleasure  at  that. — "Don't 
let  me  go,  Jamie,  not  yet.  I  could  never  let  you  go, 
Jamie.  All  the  others  went,  but  I  could  never  let  you 
go." — "No,  mother." — "Are  you  angry  with  me  because 
J  couldn't  let  you  go?" — "O!  no,  no,  no." — "I  wanted 
you  to  be  a  minister,  Jamie,  but  I  couldn't,  because  of 
your  wicked  rages.  I  wanted  to  give  one  son  to  God." — 
"If  God  is  love  then  the  gift  is  in  the  loving." — "You 
wouldn't  have  liked  to  be  a  minister?" — "No,  mother." 
— "The  Bible  never  had  its  true  meaning  for  you."- 


MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND    539 

"Not  here,  mother,  not  in  the  kind  of  life  we  have  to  live. 
The  world  has  changed  for  us,  though  it  never  changed 
for  you." — "How  is  it  changed?"  she  asked  almost  peev- 
ishly.— "It  has  become  so  evil  that  we  need  a  greater  love 
and  a  greater  God,  more  affirmation  and  less  denial,  more 
Thou  Shalt  and  less  Thou  Shalt  Not."— "I  don't  un- 
derstand. There  is  nothing  at  all  now  but  you,  Jamie." 
— "I  shall  not  leave  you." 

She  sighed  and  closed  her  eyes  and  went  back  to  her 
struggle.  He  began  instinctively  to  understand  what 
was  happening  to  her.  She  was  dying  and  seeking  to 
triumph  over  death :  she  was  claiming  his  love,  to  be  as  a 
little  child  in  his  arms.  Death  had  been  her  enemy. 
Death  had  taken  her  man  and  condemned  her  to  solitary 
days  and  years.  And  she  had  accepted  the  sentence  of 
death  until  now,  when  she  could  suffer  it  no  more. 

From  that  hour  he  never  left  her  for  a  moment  but 
sat  absorbed  in  the  effort  to  live  in  the  little  passionate 
remnant  of  her  life.  All  that  was  worthless  and  trivial 
in  his  own  being  fell  away  from  him  and  he  too  was 
charged  with  passion  seeking  that  joy  which  is  the  human 
flower  of  immortality.  Life  has  no  power  to  destroy  it, 
death  cannot  wither  it,  for  it  is  itself  life  and  death,  the 
very  impulse  of  immortal  beauty  wherein  all  things  have 
their  being.  In  these  hours  of  travail  Jamie's  imagina- 
tion won  a  new  freedom  and  he  set  the  crown  upon  the 
fabric  of  the  philosophy  which  was  as  necessary  to  him 
as  air  or  light.  Gone  for  ever  was  the  idea  of  a  God 
who  had  created  a  rigid  system  and  pronounced  it  good. 
Gone  was  the  small  idea  of  love  which  confines  it  to 
the  relation  of  a  man  and  a  woman  and  excludes  all 
else.  Gone  was  the  notion  of  a  Fall  and  a  slow  and  far- 
distant  redemption;  gone  the  myth  of  the  salvation^ in 
Christ,  except  in  so  far  as  Christ  stood  for  human  joy 


540  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

through  love;  gone  the  separation  of  good  and  evil. 
That  only  is  good  which  unites  and  creates :  that  only  is 
evil  which  separates  and  destroys,  and  good  and  evil 
are  both  necessary.  Gone  was  the  idea  of  external  au- 
thority, gone  his  respect  for  everything  in  the  world  that 
had  been  created  in  its  image,  for  power  won  by  intrigue 
and  bargaining  and  hoarded  riches.  He  was  no  longer 
a  prisoner  in  the  walls  built  by  men  in  their  worship  of 
their  false  Godhead  of  power.  He  was  free  and  open 
to  joy  and  love. 

Little  by  little  he  won  Margaret's  absolute  trust  and 
confidence.  It  was  the  strangest  wooing.  She  loved  to 
lie  in  his  arms  and  they  would  talk  of  his  father  and  of 
the  old  days  in  Scotland,  and  he  would  tell  her  of  his 
love  for  his  children  and  of  all  his  hopes  for  them  and  of 
the  great  change  that  was  come  into  the  world  and  the 
new  freedom  that  future  generations  would  create  for 
themselves.  She  could  not  always  follow  him  but  it 
was  enough  for  her  that  he  was  opening  up  his  mind 
to  her  and  into  his  thoughts  she  could  pour  her  pro- 
foundly religious  feeling. 

The  struggle  was  over.    She  lived  in  love. 

During  the  evening  before  she  died  she  bade  him  call 
Tibby,  and  charged  him  to  take  care  of  her  all  her  life. 
She  thanked  Tibby  for  all  her  kindness  and  goodness  and 
asked  her  to  take  Jamie's  hand  and  to  promise  that  she 
would  never  leave  him.  With  tears  in  her  eyes  Tibby 
promised  that  she  would  serve  him  faithfully  all  her 
days,  him  and  his  children.  She  seemed  to  insist  on 
the  word  "serve"  though  her  eyes  belied  it  and  promised 
him  a  deeper  devotion. 

When  she  had  gone  Margaret  said :  "Tibby  is  a  good 
woman.  I  have  learned  much  from  her." — "I  too," 
said  Jamie.  Then  he  felt  that  the  end  was  near,  and  he 


MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND     541 

became  in  spirit  as  he  was  when,  as  a  little  boy,  he  used 
to  clamber  on  her  bed  and  boast  and  try  to  make  her 
laugh.  He  sat  at  the  end  of  her  bed  and  talked  wild 
nonsense  at  which  she  smiled  happily,  and  until  the  smile 
faded  from  her  lips  he  kept  it  up.  Then  he  was  silent, 
and  sat  gazing  at  her.  A  puzzled  expression  came  into 
her  face,  her  lips  moved  and  she  said : — "Love — love 
and  God?"  and  she  just  stirred  her  head  as  though  to 
say  that  there  was  no  answer.  After  that  she  sank 
back  into  a  torpor  and  the  spirit  passed  out  of  her  face 
and  it  became  as  a  mask.  She  lay  so  for  hours.  Jamie 
knew  she  would  never  wake  again.  The  body  seemed 
unimportant.  It  had  given  up  its  essence.  He  did  not 
need  to  stay  by  its  side. 

For  the  first  time  during  three  days  he  went  out  and 
walked  back  to  Thrigsby.  He  approached  it  by  way  of 
a  high  hill,  surmounting  which  he  came  suddenly  in  view 
of  the  sprawling  town  with  its  chimneys,  steeples,  domes 
and  towers.  Its  careless  ugliness  moved  him  profoundly. 
He  had  lost  all  resentment  for  the  ruin  that  had  come 
upon  him  in  its  chaos.  If  it  destroyed,  its  energy  would 
make  good.  "Comfort  and  independence."  If  that  was 
what  they  were  after,  they  would  soon  weary  of  it. 
They  would  soon  be  surfeited. 

It  was  comfortable  and  beautiful  to  return  to  Cath- 
erine and  the  children.  Here  was  another  kind  of  love, 
good,  pleasant,  and  jolly:  love  captured  and  shaped  and 
released  from  its  agony.  He  was  free  of  all  trace  of 
impatience  with  Catherine  and  astonished  her  with  his 
gentle  tenderness.  He  told  her  that  his  mother  was 
dying  and  she  said :  "She  was  a  saint  if  there  ever  was 
one."_"It  is  her  wish,"  said  Jamie,  "almost  her  last, 
that  Tibby  should  come  and  live  with  us."— "I  shall  be 


542  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

very  glad,"  replied  Catherine,  "for  she  is  so  good  with 
the  children." 

When  Jamie  returned  to  his  mother's  house  he  found 
Mary  there,  wee  Mary,  a  strange  little  dry  figure  in  black 
with  a  face  too  old  for  her  years  and  lit  up  by  mis- 
chievous grey  eyes. — "I  came  at  once,"  she  said.  "I  am 
glad  I  am  in  time." — "She  won't  know  you." — "No. 
But  I  was  fond  of  her  and  admired  her  and  it  would 
have  seemed  cruelly  wrong  to  come  after  all  these  years, 
only  to  find  her  dead.  I  actually  prayed  in  the  train  that 
she  might  be  alive.  Tibby  says  you  were  with  her  to  the 
last  and  that  she  was  very  happy.  She  looks  so."  Jamie 
bade  her  be  silent.  There  was  yet  life  in  the  body  and 
he  thought  that  Margaret  might  still  be  aware  of  them 
though  she  could  give  no  sign.  The  doctor  had  said 
she  might  live  for  hours  in  that  coma.  If  that  was  liv- 
ing, what  was  death?  And  what  died?  Margaret  had 
never  been  so  living  to  him.  He  seemed  to  possess  all 
her  life,  to  be  absolved  from  the  divisions  that  had 
separated  them.  Death  might  have  the  still  white  body. 
That  which  had  stirred  in  it,  the  desire  and  the  will, 
remained.  He  felt  wonderfully  happy  and  not  at  all 
sad.  Grief  he  had  none.  Death  also  was  a  fulfilment. 
Nothing  in  him  was  shocked,  nothing  repelled. — "Would 
it  be  different,"  he  suddenly  asked  himself,  "if  it  were  I 
who  was  dying?  How  could  it  be  different?  She  was 
better  than  I,  a  stronger  and  a  nobler  spirit.  There  is 
nothing  in  my  life  that  I  value  more  than  her.  There 
is  nothing  that  I  value  for  its  own  sake.  If  it  were  I 
it  could  not  be  different." — "What  are  you  thinking, 
Jamie?"  asked  Mary.  He  told  her,  and  she  pursed  up 
her  lips. — "I  am  afraid,"  she  said,  "because  I  know  that 
it  must  some  day  be  I." — "It  is  nothing,"  he  muttered.— 
"That,"  replied  Mary,  "is  what  is  so  terrible." — "I  mean, 


MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND    543 

it  ends  nothing.  It  is  only  a  moment  in  being,  which 
has  no  end."—  "Is  that  what  you  believe?"—  "Yes."— 
"I  couldn't.  I  want  some  compensation."  —  "Compensa- 
tion for  the  wonder  of  living?"  —  "No,  for  failure  in  it." 
—  "Surely  then,  death  is  compensation  enough."  —  "I 
wish  she  would  speak  or  make  some  sign."-  -"She  is 
dead,"  said  Jamie,  for  even  as  his  sister  spoke  he  knew 
that  it  was  so. 

Mary  knelt  by  the  bedside  and  Jamie  stood  towering 
above  her.  Suddenly  Mary  broke  into  sobs  and  he 
caught  her  up  in  his  arms  and  carried  her  away.  On 
the  stairs  he  met  the  old  woman  who  had  been  called  in 
to  make  all  decent  for  the  dead. 

Downstairs  Mary  controlled  herself  and  she  clung  to 
Jamie  and  said  :  "What  I  mind  so  fearfully  is  that  some- 
thing has  gone  with  her  that  I  never  knew."-  -"And 
I,"  he  said,  "never  knew  it  till  last  night.  All  those  years 
it  was  denied  and  crushed,  sacrificed  wickedly  to  un- 
worthy things.  That  —  that  is  why  I  hate  the  world  as 
we  have  made  it.  The  true  loveliness  of  every  one  of  us 
is  denied."  —  Mary's  tears  rained  down.  She  clung  to 
her  brother  and  implored  him  never  to  let  her  go,  never 
to  keep  his  love  from  her. 

There  came  a  sharp  rat-tat  at  the  door.  It  was  Tom. 
Tibby  admitted  him  and  showed  him  into  the  room.— 
consider,"  he  said,  "that  I  ought  to  have  been  informed 
of  this  days  ago."—  "Everything  was  done,"  answered 
Jamie,  "in  accordance  with  her  wishes."-  -"At  least," 
said  Tom,  "I  claim  the  right  to  take  charge  of  the  ar- 
rangements."— "Certainly."  Tom  grunted  and  went  up- 


"Is  that,"  asked  Mary,  "what  Thrigsby  has  made  of 
Tom?"—  "To-morrow,"  replied  Jamie,  "I  will  show  you 
what  Tom  has  made  of  Thrigsby.  He  is  a  maker  of 


544  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

modern  England  and  he  is  proud  of  it." — "But  he  was 
fond  of  her." — "He  will  grieve  more  than  any  of  us."- 
"He  is  terrible,"  said  Mary. 

All  three  brothers  and  the  two  sisters  were  present  at 
the  funeral  which  Tom  had  arranged  perfectly,  even  to 
wine  for  the  lawyers  and  the  epitaph  for  his  mother's 
grave : 

HERE  LIES 

MARGARET  KEITH  LAWRIE 

The  beloved  wife  of  THOMAS  LAWRIE,  A.M.   (Edin.) 
of  Carsphairn  N.B. 

She  .  had  .  no  .  thought  .  but  .  for  .  her  .  children 

No  .  ambition  .  but  .  for  .  her  .  sons 
She  .  lived  .  to  .  serve  .  Almighty  .  God 

And  .  did  .  good  .  works 
She  .  died  .  in  .  the  .  love  .  of  .  Jesus  .  Christ 

A  .  sainted  .  woman 

A  .  mother  .  blessed  .  in  .  the  .  love 

Of  .  her  .  children. 

The  wings  of  angels  touched  above  her  head, 
And  from  her  life  was  evil  banished. 

Margaret  had  managed  to  save  two  thousand  pounds 
out  of  her  small  income,  and  this  hoard  except  for  fifty 
pounds  she  left  to  her  grandchildren. — "Good,"  said 
John,  when  the  will  was  read.  Tom  was  flushed  and 
sulky : — "At  least,"  he  said,  "the  expenses  of  the  funeral 
should  be  borne  by  the  estate."— "Not  at  all,"  replied 
John.  "I  think  it  should  be  borne  by  us  three  equally." 

Then  began  a  squabble  into  which  Jamie  was  not  to  be 
drawn.  He  was  thinking  of  the  body  of  his  mother 
being  lowered  into  the  ground.  With  her,  it  seemed  to 
him,  went  all  that  had  bound  them  together.  What 
had  he  to  do  with  hard,  angry  Tom,  slighted  because 


MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND     545 

his  childlessness  debarred  him  from  participation  in  his 
mother's  estate?  John  and  Maggie  from  their  sojourn 
in  the  South  of  England  were  already  foreigners.  They 
had  adopted  other  manners,  almost  another  speech. 
Only  Mary  was  left  and  it  seemed  that  the  family  was 
buried  with  Margaret.  Already  the  lustre  was  gone 
from  the  Keiths  and  the  Greigs  and  the  name  of  Lawrie 
could  cast  no  spell,  for  where  was  their  achievement? 
They  had  exploited  the  fag  end  of  a  tradition.  Tom  and 
John  were  rich,  but  to  what  end  ?  Their  riches  served  no 
purpose :  they  enslaved  many  and  freed  none. — "We  are 
as  separate,"  said  Jamie  to  Mary,  "as  though  we  were 
at  the  ends  of  the  earth.  We  have  worshipped  and 
served  a  thing  that  had  no  being,  a  thing  that  could  be 
dropped  into  a  hole  in  the  earth." — "Not  I,"  said  Mary. 
— -"Even  you,  for  you  expected  wonders  from  me  merely 
because  I  was  a  Lawrie  and  the  eldest  of  them.  But  I  am 
a  poor  man  and  a  failure  and  glad  to  be  so." — "What 
are  you  talking  about?"  asked  Mary. — "The  donkey's 
hind  leg,"  replied  Jamie  with  a  great  laugh,  "for  we  have 
already  talked  it  off.  Dear  old  Tom  is  a  joy  for  ever 
and  we  have  been  very  unjust  to  him." 

Mary's  Hon.  and  Rev.  had  allowed  her  only  three 
days  as  ample  time  in  which  to  bury  her  mother.  She 
had  therefore  to  return  after  a  vain  attempt  to  make 
friends  with  Catherine  who  distrusted  her  and  disap- 
proved of  her  ease  and  intelligence.  It  was  no  good. 
Jamie  could  not  help  at  all  for  life  for  him  had  stopped 
momentarily.  His  mother's  death  had  chilled  him  and 
removed  him  from  the  conduct  of  ordinary  life.  It  was 
nothing  to  him  that  Catherine  and  Mary  could  not  under- 
stand each  other.  Mutual  understanding  seemed  to  him 
so  rare  and  high  mystery  that  it  was  not  to  be  looked  for 
in  common  life.  Why  should  Catherine  and  Mary  com- 


546  THREE  SONS  AND  A  MOTHER 

prehend  each  other?  They  shared  no  purpose.  Mary's 
life  was  in  the  minds  of  intellectual  men.  She  was  a 
puzzle  even  to  himself.  Catherine's  pleasure  lay  in  sim- 
ple household  things,  and  she  was  a  puzzle  to  him  also. — 
Everything  was  a  puzzle  to  him  for  the  change  in  him, 
the  consummation  of  so  many  dreams  and  hopes,  was  so 
sudden  and  violent  that  he  looked  for  everything  else  to 
be  changed  also.  And  when  he  looked,  nothing  was 
changed.  Catherine  was  as  she  always  was,  and  he  could 
swear  that  wee  Mary  had  not  altered  by  a  line  or  a 
thought  since  she  used  to  do  his  school  tasks  for  him. 
"A  born  governess,"  he  said,  and  was  pleased  at  hitting 
her  off  with  a  phrase. 

It  was  only  when  Tibby  came  to  the  house  that  he 
began  to  thaw  into  life  again,  and  with  fresh  eyes  to  see 
new  beauty  in  Catherine  and  a  wonder  of  loyalty  in  wee 
Mary.  Then  it  seemed  to  him  that  nothing  was  gone 
from  him,  that  his  life  was  full  indeed  and  fair  of  prom- 
ise, and  he  took  up  the  task  of  interpreting  between 
Catherine  and  Mary,  wifehood  and  spinsterhood.  But 
here  was  another  failure  for  Catherine  marked  his  tender 
sympathy  with  Mary  and.  his  keen  interest  in  all  her 
thoughts  and  projects  and  was  jealous. 

Mary  had  marked  the  change  in  her  brother  when 
Tibby  came  to  the  house  and  her  thoughts  were  deep. 
She  left  Thrigsby  sad  at  heart.  Jamie  saw  her  to  the 
station.  She  was  to  travel  down  with  John  and  Maggie 
and,  at  the  last  moment,  Tom  turned  up  to  say  good- 
bye. The  train  steamed  out,  Mary  and  Maggie  waved 
their  black-edged  handkerchiefs  until  they  were  out  of 
sight.  As  they  turned  away  Tom  said :  "John  is  getting 
quite  fat.  He  tells  me  he  is  thinking  of  getting  mar- 
ried again.  I  call  it  disgusting.  O!  Agnes  told  me  to 
ask  you  to  dinner  before  you  go." — "Thanks,"  said 


MARGARET  GATHERS  HER  FAMILY  ROUND     547 

Jamie,  "but  I  think  Catherine  will  not  be  able  to  spare 
me." — "Agnes  will  be  sorry.  How  long  will  you  be 
away?"-  -"Six  months.  Perhaps  a  year." — "And  then?" 

-"I  don't  know." — "I  should  think  you  might  do  well 
as  a  journalist.  If  you  like  I'll  speak  to  Macalister  at 
my  club.  He's  editor  of  The  Daily  Express,  you  know." 
—Jamie  whacked  on  the  ground  with  his  stick :  "Tom !" 
he  cried,  "will  you  understand  once  and  for  all  that  I  do 
not  wish  you  to  interfere  in  my  affairs  or  even  to  think 
about  them." — "As  you  please,"  said  Tom. 

They  came  to  the  bottom  of  the  station  slope  and  there 
they  parted. 

Two  days  later  Jamie  was  in  Liverpool,  by  the  river 
where  long  ago  he  had  found  romance  and  relief  from 
the  torment  of  the  black  city,  the  wide  river  and  the  sea 
beyond,  with  great  ships  coming  and  going.  He  had  not 
been  on  the  water  since  his  first  coming  from  Scotland. 
Now  he  boarded  a  vessel  and  an  hour  later  she  was 
towed  out  of  the  river  and  soon  was  out  on  the  wide 
sea.  The  land  fell  away  and  was  lost.  The  moon  came 
up  in  the  west,  a  comical  red  moon  with  a  merry  face 
and  a  wisp  of  cloud  across  it  for  a  moustache.  He  stood 
on  deck  with  the  wind  blowing  cold  through  his  hair 
and  beard  and  gazed  up  at  the  moon,  which  set  him 
tingling  with  such  a  vague  hungry  longing  as  he  had  not 
known  since  he  was  a  boy  and  in  love  with  Selina  Leslie. 
The  face  in  the  moon  reminded  him  of  Mr.  Wilcox  as 
Dogberry.  The  longing  in  him  grew  into  passionate 
hope  and  he  told  himself  that  he  was  going  towards  the 
New  World  where  there  had  been  wars  of  liberty. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


11 


Form  L9-42m-8,'49  (65573)444 


THE  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


PR 

6005 

Cl58t 


A    oon  T      '""" 


